Slave

Mende Nazer's Slave: My True Story belongs to a genre I've never encountered before -- the contemporary slave narrative. She grew up in a small tribe in Sudan, and the first part of her biography describes what was, except for the nastiness of a female circumcision, a happy childhood. When she was 12, Arab raiders attacked her village, burning huts, killing many people, and capturing the author and other girls.

She ended up a house slave, spending all her time cooking, cleaning, and taking care of the children. She was beaten, deprived of social contact, and not allowed to leave the house. After several years, she managed, unlike most slaves, to escape.

Though I've heard in abstract that slavery still exists, it's shocking to read the first-hand account of a modern-day slave. It's an unsettling juxtaposition of the ante-bellum South with modern technology like airplanes and VCRs. Nazer, with the assistance of journalist Damien Lewis, presents a lively and powerful account of what she lived through, and what plenty of her contemporaries are still, sadly, contending with.

Book tag

Continuing the book tag meme that's drifting across the blogosphere…

Total number of books I’ve owned
After multiplying our book shelf count by the average number of books per shelf, I estimate that my wife and I own around 600 books.
[UPDATE: The number of books I've owned, includes those I no longer possess, comes to around 1000.]

Last book I bought
Our last Amazon order, which arrived today, includes five books, one of which I suggested: Lawrence Wright's Twins: And What They Tell Us About Who We Are.

Last book I read
I'm midway through three books right now, each of which I'm enjoying: Lord Kinross's The Ottoman Centuries, David Callahan's The Cheating Culture, and Andrew Tanenbaum's Computer Networks. Switching between books is a helpful approach my wife suggested.

Last book I finished
Malcolm Gladwell's Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. It comes across like a collection of magazine articles -- entertaining and informative without any great insight.

Five books that mean a lot to me
Julian, by Gore Vidal. Though it's not the best novel I've read (Anna Karenina qualifies for that honor), the saga of Julian the Apostate, the pagan Roman emperor who fought a doomed battle against Christianity, was appealing and provided me with my cyberspace alter-ego.

The Language Instinct, by Steven Pinker. It's a fascinating exploration of language and what language reveals about the mind.

Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code by Martin Fowler. Agile development, evolutionary design, and continual refactoring form the basis for my approach to software development.

Moral Politics by George Lakoff & What's the Matter with Kansas? by Thomas Frank. These two books tackle, from different perspectives, the great moral issue of our time: Why do so many people vote for Republicans, despite the disastrous consequences of Republican rule?