Following up on earlier posts on writing, I want to suggest why John Gruber might be on to something with his three rules for success on the web. I do not want to take the advice literally, but it is good.

John Gruber's three rules for online success:

• Fussy coffee.
• Clicky keyboard.
• Over carbonated water.

Since I can't speak to the carbonated water, I am going to write about fussy coffee and clicky keyboards.

Of course, John Gruber's advice is about how to be a successful Internet blogger, but I want to start with the idea that being a successful Internet blogger is the result of being a good writer. My assumption is that success follows quality, this might not necessarily the case.

Fussy Coffee

One advantage is the manual and time-consuming nature of making fussy coffee: it gets you away from the computer doing something mechanical without needing much thought. Select beans, grind them, measure them, fill the coffee-maker, boil the water, press the press, and brew the coffee. Making fussy coffee takes more than a moment, it involves some thought, it is mechanical and has you doing something. Dorothea Brande says many writers scrub floors, whittle wood, go for walks, or do anything that is repetitive, mundane, and does not need any thought. These tasks are a key part of writing. Fuzzy coffee is a mundane non-writing task, that helps writing. I think this is why fussy coffee is a rule for Internet success, but you could do any other similar task.

Clicky Keyboards

What about clicky keyboards? How do they help? I recently got a Kinesis Advantage Ergonomic Keyboards, not the super expensive extra clicky kind, but still decidedly tactile. Although it took me two months to get the hang of typing on it, I love it. It has helped my RSI while making editing is easier. Clicky keyboards are a good idea. There are other ways. Warren Ellis finds that writing on iPad to be a way of getting into a flow of writing. I have found a different way. For Christmas, my Dad gave me a fountain pen. for the last week, I have done all my first draft writing by hand. The nib prevents fast writing, and it slows my hand down. By using a fountain pen, my first drafts are more thoughtful and eventually more useful, than when I write with a keyboard. There are no distractions with paper, and there is higher signal-to-noise ratio of what I am writing. The prose is better than when I draft on a computer. The fountain pen forces me to take more time than the ball pens I used to use, because if I get the angle wrong the pen stops working. John Gruber’s clicky keyboard, Warren Ellis' iPad, my fountain pen. Each is a way of finding the right tools to get closer to writing. Tools matter.

While I've not had much success on Internet —perhaps because I do not drink carbonated beverages— John Gruber’s rules about fussy coffee and clicky keyboards are seller advice.

Cultiavate repetitive tasks and find the right tools.

I am a morning writer; I am writing at eight-thirty in longhand and I keep at it until twelve-thirty, when I go for a swim. Then I come back, have lunch, and read in the afternoon until I take my walk for the next day's writing. I must write the book out in my head now, before I sit down. I always follow a triangular pattern on my walks here in Princeton: I go to Einstein's house on Mercer Street, then down to Thomas Mann's house on Stockton Street, then over to Herman Broch's house on Evelyn Place. After visiting those three places, I return home, and by that time I have mentally written tomorrow's six or seven pages.

I am finding myself increasingly interested in the ritual of writing.

by Dorothea Brande

Five in the morning, coffee and sleep on the brain. What to write? How to describe in words the feeling of fieldwork? Writing is what we do as anthropologists, but sometimes the words are hard to come by. This is my morning ritual, writing twenty pages. Academics are wordsmiths, we are writers. Our smithies are notebooks, pens and paper, and laptops. Most of my adult life I have been trying to write. To form a sense in words for others. Most of this, as a University student, sometimes as a newspaper editor, as a blogger, and increasingly as an anthropologist. We write about research, we write about the work of others.

Dawn is an hour away, my pen slowly doing the work of meaning making. Write early and write regularly is Anna Tsing's advice. A ritual I am trying to adopt. Write at five o'clock in the morning force yourself to put pen to paper. A procedure in which words flow freely some mornings and others, like today, the road is tortuous and tedious, my words irrelevant, and I fear ordinary. Plodding and anxious prose with little said between two periods.

What nobody told us is that when we start fieldwork we are becoming anthropologists, and we are becoming writers. Writers have to draft the text, and there are tools and tricks of the trade. Rhythms that ease the work. Prose is our life, our sweat, and our tears. Writing is what I learned to do in the field, and if no one taught us research methods, even less to write. The evening tradition of making sense of the morning, or the morning ritual of trying to combine words to make sense of experiences, rumours, practices and suspicions. Writing is what makes up the anthropology of sense making. The hermeneutic circle of life is the job of fieldwork. We are in fact novelist , albeit with constraints of truth, fact, and reality. Our writing is as challenging.

Last week I read Dorothea Brande's *Becoming a Writer*. There are three pieces of advice that resonate with me:

1. Write early, and write every day. Write in the early-morning moments just after waking up. A moment of creativity. Cultivate this time, use it. First thing, every day. Pay attention to when those morning sessions are stronger, what did you do the night before? Do more of that.

2. The rigorous mind. Cultivate the discipline to write early, but also set a time to write, a time that forces the creative side out. Brande says, “Set your self a time, say 12:30, and write for half an hour.” Come hell or high water, write.

3. Do not read other people's work, do not talk about your writing, do not read the newspaper, do not watch movies, and do not go to the theatre. I suspect she would be appalled at blogs and Twitter as distractions as well, but her point is that writers thrive of an inner dialogue of our conversation with ourselves. The dialogue can be cultivated with mundane and repetitive tasks, but destroyed by words, read or heard.

The last piece of advice is the hardest to follow. I find myself reaching for the radio, for the internet, for a newspaper, for a cereal box, every few hours. But, in the last few weeks, I have followed it, the results for my thesis draft have been impressive.

English, 192 pages, Tarcher, 1981

Diamond has done what anthropology — with the exception of Graeber and Debt – has not: written a big, accessible book which presents our findings to a general audience. He is the new Margaret Mead. The new Margaret Mead, people. Meanwhile, over in our corner of the world we are either not interested in popularization (when is Rabinow going to write ‘anthropology of the contemporary: a light beach read’?) or else are committed to ‘public anthropology for anthropologists’: accounts of organ trafficking, war zones, etc. that deal with our issues and are written in ways we consider ‘popular’ and consist largely in trying to convince the public that they ought to care as much about structural violence as we do.

Rex at Savage Minds has a review of The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn From Traditional Socieites by Jared Diamond, which I have not read. His post did get me thinking about Debt: The First 5000 Years, which I have. Kieth Hart has an excellent review on his website.

Good writers edit,  but great writers need excellent editors. The hardest part of writing is the revision process.

All of the great writers had great editors, but, today, with new publishing paradigms and the meat grinder of journals and academia, no longer do publishing houses, journals, or online publications provide skilled editors, or even bad ones. Gone are the days of the 19th century when highly educated, but unemployable, middle-class women donated their time to edit their spouses’ work.

Call it what you will, Writing 2.0, Social Writing, or Peer Editing, what we need is a place that brings together great writers who are also excellent editors. It’s not the academic peer review process, which focuses on theoretical, methodological, or disciplinary concerns, but peer editing, which focuses more informally on the more mundane, but almost as important, tasks of writing a clean draft, with literary flair, sound structure, and technical perfection.

Have you ever wanted to ask, “Is this any good?” or “Does this sentence make sense?” or “How can I say this better?” or “What point do you derive from this paragraph?” If so, then you know what I am talking about. We need a place that brings together people who write for a living or as a passion—and can edit. A space for sharing unfinished articles, preliminary drafts, and other sorts of writing to be edited by peers—graduate students, freelance journalists, novelists, bloggers, and other wordsmiths—who also want access to a space for collaborative editing in order to do what we all find hardest to do: craft a literary construction.

Have you ever needed someone with outstanding literary judgment to review your work? Rather than waiting for your supervisor, editor, or employer, who might never get back to you with substantive, constructive edits anyway, we need a place to edit.

I envision a shared writing space, a Write Club if you will, where you can post your drafts, works in progress, blog posts, dissertation chapters, and draft articles. Excellent writers, who also happen to be excellent editors, could then enthusiastically mark up your copy, with honesty and acuity.

The five rules of Write Club

1. You do not talk about Write Club. No, seriously, writing is hard, and getting feedback is nerve wracking; hence, don't talk about other people's drafts.

2. See above. Do not talk about Write Club. Shut up.

3. Write and edit. If you post something to be edited, then edit something else. Or better yet, edit something first, then post something later.

4. Be critical, be constructive, and most of all be honest. Saying "it's good" and nothing else is not critical or constructive, and probably not true. At least not at this stage. But do give props where props are due.

5. E-mail the author when you are done, otherwise they may not notice.

Write Club was an idea for a shared Google Docs folder for collaborative editing. It never quite went anywhere, but I think the idea is still worth considering. If there is anyone out there who wants to run with the idea, and implement a Web 2.0 space, let me know.

pour Jael Duarte, Daniel Tubb

First published in The Leveller, November, December, 2012.

Les Forces révolutionnaires armées de la Colombie – Armée du peuple (FARC-EP) et le gouvernement colombien ont entamé des négociations de paix à Oslo (Norvège) le 18 octobre 2012. Malgré des opinions divergentes sur la situation socioéconomique du pays et les chemins à suivre pour mettre fin à la guerre, les deux parties poursuivent leur discussion à La Havane (Cuba) en novembre. Quelles que soient leurs bonnes intentions, les parties sont confrontées à des défis complexes et redoutables.

Cinquante ans de conflit armé

Le gouvernement colombien est en négociation avec les FARC – EP; celles-ci, cependant, ne sont pas la seule force de guérilla active au pays – il y a, entre autres, l’Armée de libération nationale (ELN); elles ne sont pas non plus l’unique acteur armé illégal – en ce domaine, il faut compter avec les groupes paramilitaires d’extrême droite. En 2005, une loi a instauré un processus formel de démobilisation de ces groupes; mais ceux-ci continuent d’opérer sous le couvert de bandes criminelles.

De plus, pendant dix ans, le gouvernement étatsunien, par le biais de son Plan Colombie, a financé l’armée officielle pour combattre le commerce de la drogue. L’armée colombienne a gagné plusieurs batailles importantes contre les FARC, en éliminant plusieurs de leurs leaders. Cela n’empêche pas les différents acteurs du conflit de se nourrir de la production et de la commercialisation de la cocaïne et de se battre pour le contrôle du territoire. Aujourd’hui encore, la Colombie reste un des plus grands fournisseurs de cocaïne.

Par ailleurs, les principales victimes de la violence armée (y compris celle de l’armée officielle) sont toujours les femmes, les paysans, les afro-colombiens et les peuples autochtones. C’est ainsi que les régions rurales restent la proie de la plus longue guerre de l’hémisphère occidental.

Le conflit armé a forcé le déplacement de quatre à cinq millions de personnes du milieu rural, faisant de la Colombie le pays comptant le plus grand nombre de déplacés forcés après le Soudan. La Colombie est également un des pays les plus dangereux pour les syndicalistes, et malgré la baisse constatée par les statistiques les plus récentes, le taux d’homicide, pour raisons politiques, reste élevé.

Cette réalité effroyable semble méconnue tants de la capitale Bogota, et parfois même des fonctionnaires du gouvernement.

Les raisons pour la paix

L’année dernière, le gouvernement colombien a mis en œuvre « la loi des victimes». Cette loi prévoit, en guise de réparation, une somme d’argent et la restitution de leurs terres aux victimes du conflit armé.

Néanmoins, cette loi trouve rapidement ses limites, l’accès des victimes à leurs anciennes terres étant souvent un problème. En effet, les conditions de vie à la campagne colombienne n’ont pas beaucoup changé et restent très précaires. De sa part, l’État laisse à l’abandon la santé, l’éducation, les transports et bien d’autres choses. De plus, la peur y est constante, plusieurs leaders des organisations de déplacés forcés ont été tués quand ils ont tenté de récupérer leurs terres.

Le défi est de parvenir à la paix et de résoudre les nombreux problèmes structurels à l’origine du conflit, tout en faisant en sorte que les populations rurales soient prises en compte. Le risque existe qu’une politique pragmatique mette un terme au conflit en Colombie sans qu’un véritable processus de justice l’accompagne, c’est à dire, le jugement des responsables des crimes et la compensation des victimes, d’une telle manière qu’après, personne n’ait le sentiment de prendre les armes pour se faire compenser.

L’ordre du jour de la paix

L’ordre du jour, convenu entre les parties, est chargé. Il comprend une politique de développement agricole visant à assurer le développement social et équitable à travers le pays, l’accès à la terre et la reconnaissance formelle de la propriété foncière; les programmes mettant l’accent sur les infrastructures et l’amélioration des terres; le développement social axé sur la santé, l’éducation, le logement et l’éradication de la pauvreté; la relance de la production agricole des petits producteurs par des subventions, le crédit et la commercialisation. Il inclut également les droits et les garanties relatives à la participation politique des FARC-EP, ainsi que l’assurance d’un meilleur accès à la participation citoyenne aux niveaux national, régional et local pour la population la plus vulnérable. Par contre, même si les parties ont parlé de réparation aux victimes, la question de savoir si un processus de justice sera ou non mis en place n’a pas été abordée.

La réalisation de paix se heurte à toute une série d’obstacles et de contraintes. Premièrement, les deux parties sont accusées de crime de guerre et de violation des droits de la personne. En ce domaine, une amnistie est impossible selon les termes de la Cour pénale internationale et le Statut de Rome dont la Colombie est signataire. Cela soulève des questions sur la façon dont les conditions de la paix peuvent être négociées sans gommer la responsabilité respective des uns et des autres – direction de la guérilla, commandement militaire, anciens paramilitaires, classes politiques – pour les violations des droits de la personne et les crimes contre l’humanité qu’ils ont commis ou dont ils ont été complices.

Deuxièmement, le risque existe d’une répétition des mauvaises expériences de 2006, après la démobilisation et le désarmement des paramilitaires, quand beaucoup d’entre eux, sous de nouveaux habits, ont continué à commettre les mêmes crimes.

Autre élément, la guerre en Colombie a été sale. Des violations des droits de la personne, des déplacements forcés, des disparitions forcées et des massacres qui ont été perpétrés par les paramilitaires, la police, l’armée, les classes politiques locales et la guérilla, envers les paysans, les populations autochtones, les femmes et les militants syndicaux. Les observateurs du processus de paix craignent que ces crimes soient laissés dans l’impunité, comme ce fut le cas avec la “loi de justice et paix” en 2006 traitant de la démobilisation et du désarmement des forces paramilitaires, loi qui, malgré son nom, n’a en rien rendu justice aux victimes.

La paix en Colombie pourrait bien être une paix sans justice, à moins que le gouvernement et les négociateurs des FARC apportent aux organisations de la société civile une réelle réponse à l’impunité qui règne dans le pays – une impunité en lien direct avec les conditions quotidiennes en milieu rural de nombreux Colombiens qui, en plus de tout cela, sont aujourd’hui confrontés à la présence des entreprises extractives multinationales sur leur territoire riche en ressourcesnaturelles.

In 1919, William Skunk, an English Professor at Cornell University, wrote The Elements of Style for use by students in his classes. One of his students was E. B. White, of Charlotte’s Web fame, who, almost thirty-eight years later, edited and expanded the little book into a grammatical gem. The books is a pithy and concise guide to good English prose; something than many graduate students struggling to write a Ph.D. thesis will find useful. It consists of rules to write by, admonitions on word choice—disinterested meaning impartial, uninterested meaning “no interested in”—, and advice on style. The twenty-two elementary rules of English usage clearly explain how to properly write. For example, how to distinguish between the uses and abuses of commas and apostrophes, colons and semicolons, and hyphens and dashes, or how to correctly join to clauses. The recommendation to always use the last comma in series, before the and, was refreshing; as was the rule on “’s” for most plurals, even “Charles’s toothache.”

More than composition though, Skunk and White lay down guidelines for editing. A list to post at eye-level on the wall. They are rules to expand my own editing tricks, i.e., “When in doubt, cut it out,” and to curtail my reflexive turn toward short sentences where sometimes a more relaxed approach to punctuation would be an improvement. I disagree with the rule, “Choose a suitable design and stick to it,” because the approach is more or less the opposite of how I write. I find writing to be a long process of composition, revision, and reflection, and anytime I have adopted a ‘plan’ before I begin approach, I become stymied in the straitjacket I set for myself. Writing is never easy, and I have always found the process of revision even more time consuming than the process of composition. The Elements of Style provides laundry list of common errors in style and composition, things to watch out for, and advice on how to improve. As in most things, I am sure the trick to striving towards perfection is to practice.

105 pages, Allyn and Bacon, 2000.

I have been too busy to watch movies lately, but found the time for this strangely dark romantic-comedy about urban solitude in contemporary Argentina, and probably anywhere else urban as well. It is about two neighbours in their thirties, who share similar anxieties, and who are alone and have never met. The introduction on the madness of architecture in Buenos Aires is stunning, and Medianeras a charming movie.

94 mins, Spanish, Argentina, Director: Gustavo Taretto

"Haven't you ever wanted to go back to the middle of the story to start again?" Lucia y el Sexo is a story that becomes more complicated, and far better, as it progresses. Also, it becomes profoundly sadder. The movie follows the love of Lorenzo and Lucia, and their joint history on an Island in the Mediterranean. Lucia goes there after Lorenzo disappears, and runs into Lorenzo’s past. Lorzeno is a writer, and on that Island, his fiction and the truth merge.

Something more mundane struck me as I watched the movie. I first saw it in 2004, in Spain, while learning Spanish on a year abroad program. I was sitting on the floor, eating olives, in a lavender apartment that I shared with two Spanish girls, and a French boy. What struck me was the old technology, the clacking keyboards, the blue screens of Word Perfect 5.1. The technology was much older, much louder, and far slower. Maybe it was better for writing. Today, when I write on my the fast MacBook, the Internet is only ever a four-finger swipe away. Distractions are easy to come by, even in full screen text editors. Still, I am romanizing. On the old Performa I had in first year, I still found time to program Spanish verbs in order to memorize them.

I did remembered the movie being far better that it seemed during the first 45 minutes. But, by the second half, as the plot twists increased, I think it became an excellent movie.

128 min, Director: Julio Medem

via Mark Bernstein

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, the recent movie adaption of John Le Carre's classic of the same name is a beautiful take on British espionage, circa 1970. What intrigued me, after the credits rolled, was that the author of the book, John Le Carre, was also involved in making the film.

So, I started googling him and came across the three part Smiley trilogy which I am quite excited to read. I also came across the history of British super spy Kim Philby who was a double agent for the Ruissians in the 1950s. Philby was almost made chief of the British MI6 before ending up in Moscow. There is a fascinating article by Ron Rosenbaum published in 1994 that argues he actually might have been a British triple agent. In any case, Kim Philby and the Age of Paranoia is well worth the read.

129 mins, Director: Tomas Alfredson

by Michael Ruhlman

via Mark Bernstein

Michael Ruhlman's cookbook is an epiphany for me. I have long been a bread baker and pie maker, skills infused in me by my mother, but I have rarely tried my hand at pastas, biscuits, cookies, pâte à choux and other baked goods.

Ruhlman's short cookbook Ratio explores the continuum of these combinations of flour, water, and egg. Ratios are the key to doughs and batters. He uses the same logic in other sections on stocks, sausages, mayonnaise, vinaigrette, hollandaise sauces, custards, and desserts. The key to each is their mathematical ratio, the proportion of simple ingredients, and the way that specific flavours are in addition to these ratios. My epiphany was to see the connections between foods, and the realization that recipes are simply variations on these themes.

A culinary ratio is a fixed proportion of one ingredient or ingredients relative to another. These proportions form the backbone of the craft of cooking. When you know a culinary ratio, it is not like knowing a single recipe; it is instantly knowing a thousand. Here's the ratio for bread: 5 parts flour: 3 parts water.

Aimed at beginning cooks, the Ratio is, for me at least, full of techniques that I am not familiar with, and machinery that I do not own. Ruhlman stresses that this former point is important. Cooking is about ratios and about techniques. I understand the technique of bread making, but, not for many of the other recipes. I am now excited to return to a kitchen, with an oven and more than one electric burner, to put ratios to the test.

English, 272 pages, Scribner, 2010

The Fall 2011 issue of Nokoko, the open-access journal of the Institute of African Studies at Carleton University is out.

This issue particularly addresses the ways racism continues to impact Africans and the Diaspora. Two articles examine complexities of the new diasporas while others venture into serious debates on feminism and gender studies in Africa.

The new issue has articles on perceptions of Africa and foreign direct investment, feminism, HIV/AIDs, identity, hair, and trading. I am on the editorial board.

In light of the recent tragic incident involving the death of 10 migrant workers in Southern Ontario, I felt it was finally time to take the wraps off of a journal I kept during a two-week trip in early 2004 to investigate the conditions of undocumented Chinese migrant farm workers. I hope this can help shed light on the kinds of conditions faced every day by the people who tend, pick and process the food we eat.

A friend of mine spent two-weeks in 2004 investigating the conditions of undocumented Chinese workers in southwestern Ontario. After the death of ten migrant workers a few weeks ago, he has posted excerpts from his journal on Rabble: Inside a migrant worker transport van and Inside the working conditions of migrant workers: Journal two.

by Haruki Murakami

Murkami’s story is about K., a primary schoolteacher, and his enigmatic college friend Sumire. She reads Jack Kerouac, wears heavy overcoats, and wants to be a writer. My kind of writer:

Not that she suffered from writer’s block—far from it. She wrote endlessly, everything that came into her head. The problem was that she wrote too much. You’d think that all she’d have to do was cut out the extra parts and she’d be fine, but things weren’t that easy. She could never decide on the big picture—what was necessary and what wasn’t. The following day when she re-read what she’d printed out, every line looked absolutely essential.

Sumire has not spilt enough blood to write, she is barely 21. She falls in love, not with K, but with Miu. Miu is sophisticated, fourteen years older, well travelled, Korean Japanese, and a woman. At first, she is unaware, and later she unable to return Sumire’s love. Miu is an importer of wines and music, and gives Sumire a job as a personal assistant. They go to Europe as traveling companions to purchase wine, but are each lonely in their own way as they travel through Italy, France, and finally Greece.

Murkami captures the frantic reading of great literature in youth, the naivety, the optimism, and most of all the loneliness.

Japanense (English Translation), 224 pages, Vintage, 2002

by Julian Barnes

The winner of this year‘s Booker Prize, Julian Barnes tells the two part story of Tony. His memories of coming of age in the 1960s, and the unravelling of truths long unknown after a live comfortably lived. The Sense of an Ending is both a story of love, his and other people’s, as well as a story of memories poorly remembered and the tales that we tell ourselves. It is also the story of a narrator whom we follow, but who is not very reliable.

The novel is short, and I started and finished it in one late night sitting. Still, it shortness is a strength, and Barnes’ writing is concise, direct, and not too descriptive, or overly lyrical. It is too the point.

The ending is somewhat of a letdown, awkward in the way it wraps up Tony’s puzzle. Worth a second read.

160 pages, Random House Canada, 2011.

by Christopher Moore

A dirty job, but someone’s got to do it. Charlie Asher is a second hand thrift store owner in San Francisco. On the day of his daughter’s birth he unwittingly becomes a death merchant, helping souls find their new home.

A quick read, rather funny, certainly not high literature. Moore dedicates A Dirty Job to hospice workers and volunteers around the world.

English, 405 pages, HarperCollins, 2007.

I write about Yaaba as I saw it, without introduction and without discussion during a festival of African films in Quibdó, Colombia. Yaaba is a slow, visually beautiful, memorable movie about rural life in a small dry village on the Savannah. Two kids, Bila and his cousin Nopoko, befriend an old lady, Sara. Sara has been ostracized from the village and is called a witch. Bila becomes her friend and calls her yaaba, or grandmother. Nopoko is taken ill, and Sara finds help. The movie ends as it begins, with two children playing in the dry grasslands. The simplicity of the story left me with many thoughts. The movie was so slow that, at times, I found my mind drifting, yet it kept drawing me back in with gentle jabs. It shows a vision of the rural life without preaching, telling the small stories without statistics, poverty, violence, or explanation. A simple story of village life, one accompanied always by the wind.

90 min, Director: Idrissa Ouedraogo

by David Nicholls

I’ll admit it, I came across David Nicholls’ most recent book while browsing for a movie. Some kind of romantic comedy on iTunes. The title “One Day” was intriguing. The movies premise was compelling.

Nicholls follows the lives of the two protagonists, every July 15, for 20 years from their meeting to the end. I thought I might like One Day in the same way I liked Away We Go; a coming of age tale for my generation. Since it was a book as well, I downloaded it to read on the iPad.

It opens with a description of a meeting between Dexter Mayhew and Emma Morley in the student squalor of Edinburgh in the 1980s. The left-wing agitation, Tracy Chapmen, and dirty wine glasses resonated with my own studies at Trent University. The first few chapters then turn to wandering travels, and being lost in dead end jobs in the early 1990s. It all connected with me. I to have travelled to India and lain on a beach in the Mediterranean. I was never quite as sexy though; always too polite or with too many books to read.

Mid way through One Day threatened to become a Bridget Jones (or Jane Austin) story of love unattainable. But, Nicholls redeemed himself with the suddenness of happiness and the stupidity of death. That is what really got to me. I am not 40, but I have lost a partner, and One Day brought that all back to me. Nicholls got me reading fiction again. I am not complaining.

English, 448 pages, Vintage, 2010

by Ernest Cline

I am a child of the 1980s, but I was a teenager in the 1990s. I make no pretense to be a fan of Japanese anime from the 1970s, and am have no memories of the video games that Ernest Cline writes about. In elementary school I didn’t play Dungeons and Dragons, I played Advanced Dungeons, and Dragons.

A sublime ode to the 1980s and her video games and geek culture; it is a beautiful book. I still remember that first day when my parents came home with an Atari. It wasn’t a game console, it was a computer. An Atari 1040 ST, with one megabyte of memory, a monochrome monitor, and built it keyboard.

It was for my mother’s work. My childhood memories of computer games were not the Atari 2600; truly, I did not know what the Atari 2600 was until much later. In Grade 8, everyone was ‘atarily tired of my Atari’ as I talked about not much else. Excited by programming, at eleven I developed my own “operating system”: Daniel’s Operating System I called it, DOS for short. Somewhere along the line I stopped being a programmer, stopped thinking in arrays and memory structures, and became a Spanish major and now an Anthropologist.

The part that struck home about Ready Player One was those early games. I have never played them, but I have played more recent titles, from the early 1990s: Escape from Monkey Island, Utopia, SimCity, and SimCity 2000.

Ernest’s Cline’s book made me think about the computer of my youth, not his. For that, Ready Player One is well worth the read.

English, 384 pages, Crown, 2011

by Mateo Mina

Fueron negros los que desarrollaron la tierra caliente, no sólo en Colombia sino en todo el mundo. Fueron negros los que extrajeron el oro que hizo rica a la colonia, los que cultivaron la caña, a los que cavaron el Canal de Panamá y los que construyeron las obras públicas. Sin ellos no existiría la llamada 'civilización';, de la cual la clase dominante y los blancos se jactan tan orgullosamente llamándola suya, diciendo que los negros son indignos de tal 'civilización.'

— Mateo Mina, Esclavitud y Libertad en el Valle del Río Cauca

It was the blacks who developed the hot lands, not only in Colombia but throughout the world. It were blacks that extracted the gold that made the colony wealthy, they grew the cane, they dug the Panama Canal, and they built the public works. Without them there would be nothing called 'civilization', which the white ruling classes are so proud of calling their own, saying that the blacks are undeserving of such a 'civilization.'

— Mateo Mina, Slavery and Freedom in Cauca River Valley.

There is something compelling about Esclavitud y Libertad en el Valle del Río Cauca. Michael Taussig, one of the most well known English language anthropologists of Colombia, wrote the short book of non-fiction in Spanish under the pen name Mateo Mina in the early 1970s. In choosing his pen name, Tuassig pays homage to a leader of the slave rebellions of the 19th century. Taussig's words have a clarity that I find refreshing in the evening heat of Quibdó. He describes the conflicts over land in the north of the department of the Caucua. The way that the land owning classes used violence, technology, and the language of civilization to force black peasants from their land, with disastrous cultural, social, and economic results.

Esclavitud y Libertad is a precursor to Taussig's later works on the devil and commodity fetishism, violence and healing, the magic of the state, and so forth. What makes the book interesting is that although it is clearly within a framework of class analysis, with a linear progression that is reminiscent of a simplistic Marxist analysis, Taussig also makes few theoretical digressions, which accompany so much of his later work. Indeed, it has a clear direct language that his more literary endeavours lack, although there is a foreshadowing to that in his later work.

The book is compelling precisely because of its (then contemporary) economic history of the area around Puerto Tejida. He describes the abundance and richness of the land in the area during the pre-colonial period, the horrors of Spanish slavery, and the rebellions and resistance the second half of the 19th century when black peasants fought for their land. He concludes with period of consolidation of land in the hands of a the dominant classes in the twentieth century with the War of a Thousand days, La Violencia, and the 'green revolution' and the impact of all this process on peasant society.

In the book’s linearity, Taussig probably misses much of the nuances of these historical forces. Things were perhaps never so clear cut. Yet, it is the simplicity of the basic account that makes the book all the stronger. The lack of jargon, the lack of theory, and the space that he gives to voices from the archives and interviews is compelling. It is strange to write, but there is something about his story of the landed and the landless, the worker and the boss, that is compelling, although I have an undergraduate degree filled with postmodern critique of these simple stories.

Taussig wrote Esclavitud y Libertad at the beginning of a long career. I find it thought provoking as I think about what will result from my own doctoral work on gold mining in the Chocó.

Spanish, 164 pages, Publicaciones de la Rosca, 1975.