2020 Reading Part I

I was a little disappointed in Tiempos Recios (translated Tough Times). It felt disjointed as well as a rehash of Mario Vargas Llosa's novel La Fiesta del Chivo. Tiempos Recios is MVL's critique of the U.S. involvement in Guatemalan politics in the 1950s and 1960. That critique did come out somewhat muddled. The suffering and the chaos in Guatemala did not shine through very well. MVL chose to focus the narrative on two characters, Johnny Abbes Garcia, the Dominican assassin, and Marta Borrero Parra, the lover of dictator Carlos Castillo Armas. Although these two are key to a major event in Guatemala, Johnny and Marta do not seem to have much to do with the story of Guatemala as a country or with the effects of the U.S.' intervention on behalf of the United Fruit Company during this period.

2019 Reading Part II

LITERATURE 

Reading Virgil's The Aeneid as a follow-on to The Odyssey and as a prequel to my trip to Rome, I was fascinated by the differences between the Greek and Roman epic poems. Virgil tells the myth-narrative of the founding of Rome and its empire. The hero, Aeneas, defeated at Troy, leads the remaining Trojans on adventures throughout the Mediterranean to fulfill his god-given destiny to found Rome in Italy. Along the way he scorns beautiful Dido, visits his father in the underworld, and unleashes carnage in Italy. While this version has a decent introductory essay I highly recommend pairing your reading of this Western Civilization classic with the podcast Literature and History's four episodes on The Aeneid and BBC's In Our Time discussion.