If you like the simplicity of Alexander McCall Smith's Ladies No. 1 Detective Agency series, then you will like A Guide to the Birds of East Africa you by Nicholas Drayson. It is not really a guide, but a novel and makes for an interesting read.
I picked up the book at the library because Africa has been on my mind lately because of some wonderful bloggers that I have met from there recently. Also the cover of the book made me think of Lori's artwork that she wrote about recently. Here is a review that summarizes it nicely and here is an interview with the author.
And here is an excerpt to give you a taste of the writing:
Is it an endearing quirk among European explorer to imagine that every geographical feature they clap eyes on for the first time is in need of a new name, or is it just a plain silly one? As far as I understand it, humans have been knocking around this part of Africa for - give or take a birthday candle - three million years. The existence of a large wet patch smack in the middle of them had not gone unnoticed. How large? Bigger than lake Michigan, bigger than Tasmania, bigger than Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont and Rhode Island all rolled into one. It is so big that people on one side gave it one name, people on the other side gave it another and people in between gave it several more. But that didn't matter to Dr Livingstone. Along he came and he didn't ask the locals what they called this large lake at the top end of the Nile. He gave it yet another name, in honour of the elder of a tribe of white people on a small island five thousand miles away. Endearing, or silly? I really can't decide.
Comments
If we had known the internet then, and had all been blogging, maybe many of our haughtyness and misunderstandings could have been avoided??
xx lori