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3.77 AVERAGE
3.77 AVERAGE
informative
reflective
slow-paced
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Classism
Moderate: Racial slurs, Colonisation, Classism
adventurous
informative
slow-paced
Aquí en mi intención anual de leer novelas ambientadas en mi próximo viaje.
Es un clásico, pero le falta un poco de forma. Son unas memorias y son recuerdos allí y allá, sin conectar. Se me ha hecho largo y aburrido...
Es un clásico, pero le falta un poco de forma. Son unas memorias y son recuerdos allí y allá, sin conectar. Se me ha hecho largo y aburrido...
hopeful
reflective
relaxing
medium-paced
dark
hopeful
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Gorgeous prose, some very interesting stories, and a glimpse into a very specific time in Kenya's past.
3 Stars = I liked the book. I'm glad I read it.
reflective
medium-paced
While the story isn't bad, the author makes a lot of sweeping statements about various groups of people. I found these statements most useful in explaining the white settlers, as the resentment of the Africans makes total sense. The second book, Shadows on the Grass, was in some ways unnecessary if you have just read the first book but eventually had moments worth listening to. A note of caution: the audio version has whole passages in languages other than English, which the listener is just assumed to understand. The French wasn't especially difficult, but I felt like there was enough of it that it would be frustrating without it. In the end, I feel that West with the Night by Beryl Markham was a more interesting book, which features the same group of people at more or less the same time but was (in my opinion) less colonial.
There's a lot to unpack about this book. I'll mention a few things.
The prose is beautiful in some places. Description of physical landscapes and the author's own experience of them is visceral.
Blixen's books about her time in Kenya are closer to a series of carefully curated anecdotes than a memoir or a novel. Events described are not in chronological order and Blixen does not include her husband in her books aside from a couple of brief mentions. (I don't blame her for not including the syphilis, though.) On one hand, a single woman running a farm in colonial Kenya is a romantic figure... but it is not the whole story. I had to keep reminding myself that these works were semi-fictional and were embellished or altered in some places for a more satisfying story or for Blixen's personal reasons.
Tons of quotations in Latin, French and other languages without translation. I'm not sure when this sort of snobbery petered out, but I'm guessing it was on the decline decades before Blixen began her memoirs.
The author was writing in an era that is becoming ever more distant and she came from a time, place, and circumstance that made her seem, perhaps, a bit antiquated even in her own time. But it becomes more and more difficult to dismiss a lot of Blixen's literary idiosyncrasies as just sloppy or the folly of an earlier generation. She constantly uses phrases like "All natives are..." and uses "Africa" or "African" when a more specific geographic designation would be much more appropriate. This kind of generalization is especially egregious from an author who created a mythology of herself as an iconoclastic, progressive individual. Woke (for her time) or not, she clearly had a paternalistic colonist mentality and was a hell of a snob.
The prose is beautiful in some places. Description of physical landscapes and the author's own experience of them is visceral.
Blixen's books about her time in Kenya are closer to a series of carefully curated anecdotes than a memoir or a novel. Events described are not in chronological order and Blixen does not include her husband in her books aside from a couple of brief mentions. (I don't blame her for not including the syphilis, though.) On one hand, a single woman running a farm in colonial Kenya is a romantic figure... but it is not the whole story. I had to keep reminding myself that these works were semi-fictional and were embellished or altered in some places for a more satisfying story or for Blixen's personal reasons.
Tons of quotations in Latin, French and other languages without translation. I'm not sure when this sort of snobbery petered out, but I'm guessing it was on the decline decades before Blixen began her memoirs.
The author was writing in an era that is becoming ever more distant and she came from a time, place, and circumstance that made her seem, perhaps, a bit antiquated even in her own time. But it becomes more and more difficult to dismiss a lot of Blixen's literary idiosyncrasies as just sloppy or the folly of an earlier generation. She constantly uses phrases like "All natives are..." and uses "Africa" or "African" when a more specific geographic designation would be much more appropriate. This kind of generalization is especially egregious from an author who created a mythology of herself as an iconoclastic, progressive individual. Woke (for her time) or not, she clearly had a paternalistic colonist mentality and was a hell of a snob.
I read Out of Africa as part of a bookclub, and I have to admit that I was't looking forward to it. By the time I started reading it, I had a week until the bookclub meeting, and I doubted that the book would grab me enough to finish it in time.
So I was surprised when I went to the book store to pick it up how readable it was from Page 1. Motivated by the desire to finish it before the meeting, I got through it pretty quickly. But when that motivation went away (the meeting was canceled) I had a hard time getting through the book. Even though it's very well written, it reads like a bunch of journal entries, quirky events, and observations. The book picks up with little context (Who is she? How did she get there?) and little narrative push, which means that it was hard to get engrossed in the story.
The last section of the book is different, because it does tell more of a story -- and as a result it is the most interesting part of the book. The last section talks about leaving Africa as well as the death of her friend Dennys Finch Hatton. She never says explicitly that they were lovers, but it is clear that they were very close. If she had been more specific about their relationship, the story would've been even more interesting, and that reveals the faults of this book. Only in this last section does it feel like there is more life and feeling in her writing.
There were several passages in the book that I highlighted, because she wrote so beautifully and perceptively. For example, she seems to nail female passive aggressiveness here: "She had to the highest degree, the feminine trait of appearing to be exclusively on the defensive, concentrated on guarding the integrity of her being, when she was really, with every force in her, bent upon the offensive." Or here she on competitiveness in men: "Men, I think, cannot easily or harmoniously envy or triumph over one another."
Overall, while I enjoyed the book, most of all, I thought that it's probably famous because of Karen Blixen's own story as a woman living alone in Africa. I read about her life a little, and it is even more interesting than that -- She was in love with her brother, she married her second cousin only to get divorced while in Africa, and she died of anorexia. This books feels more like the source material for a really fascinating biography.
So I was surprised when I went to the book store to pick it up how readable it was from Page 1. Motivated by the desire to finish it before the meeting, I got through it pretty quickly. But when that motivation went away (the meeting was canceled) I had a hard time getting through the book. Even though it's very well written, it reads like a bunch of journal entries, quirky events, and observations. The book picks up with little context (Who is she? How did she get there?) and little narrative push, which means that it was hard to get engrossed in the story.
The last section of the book is different, because it does tell more of a story -- and as a result it is the most interesting part of the book. The last section talks about leaving Africa as well as the death of her friend Dennys Finch Hatton. She never says explicitly that they were lovers, but it is clear that they were very close. If she had been more specific about their relationship, the story would've been even more interesting, and that reveals the faults of this book. Only in this last section does it feel like there is more life and feeling in her writing.
There were several passages in the book that I highlighted, because she wrote so beautifully and perceptively. For example, she seems to nail female passive aggressiveness here: "She had to the highest degree, the feminine trait of appearing to be exclusively on the defensive, concentrated on guarding the integrity of her being, when she was really, with every force in her, bent upon the offensive." Or here she on competitiveness in men: "Men, I think, cannot easily or harmoniously envy or triumph over one another."
Overall, while I enjoyed the book, most of all, I thought that it's probably famous because of Karen Blixen's own story as a woman living alone in Africa. I read about her life a little, and it is even more interesting than that -- She was in love with her brother, she married her second cousin only to get divorced while in Africa, and she died of anorexia. This books feels more like the source material for a really fascinating biography.