Yum & Yuk

From Time, a collection of photographer-chosen photographs taken on 9/11. Still so hard to look at.

Recently finished The Coroner's Lunch. Initially I was pretty enthused about the book, and found it a welcome change from the cranky middle aged white men in cold climates that I usually hang out with (in mystery form); The Coroner's Lunch is the first in a series about a 72 year old witty, fearless doctor-turned-reluctant-coroner living in Laos. It's very well-written and certainly unique, but my enthusiasm waned eventually because the mystery part of the book didn't really grab or involve me. I ended up enjoying it more as a straight-fiction read than as a mystery read, eventually, if that makes sense. However, it also could've been my own ignorance about Lao and Vietnamese history that stopped me from fully connecting to the political murder aspect. I'm definitely interested in checking out more from the series, but first I'm headed back to more "traditional" mystery grounds now - some Ian Rankin...

I'm also reading Women God and Food. I've heard about the book for years but ignored it because it sounded really "woo woo" and I was dubious. However, I leafed through a friend's copy this past weekend and the book was surprisingly accessible, and had some blurbs that really hit home.

Muhammed Ali’s Attica Prison Riot Poem: "The Attica Prison Uprising (left) occurred at the Attica Correctional Facility in Attica, New York, United States in 1971. The riot was based in part upon prisoners’ demands for better living conditions, and was led in large part by a small band of political revolutionaries. On September 9, 1971, responding to the death of prisoner George Jackson, a black radical activist prisoner who had been shot to death by corrections officers in California’s San Quentin Prison on August 21, about 1,000 of the prison’s approximately 2,200 prisoners rioted and seized control of the prison, taking 33 staff hostage. The State began negotiating with the prisoners."