I spent most of June reading
The Epic of Latin America by John A. Crow and only finished it earlier this month.
I avoided reading this for the longest time because it was a birthday gift from an ex. It turns out I had cheated myself out of one of the most compelling reads I'd had in a long time.
The book is essentially a crash-course in Latin American history, ranging from pre-columbian times through to about ten years ago. The book doesn't read so much like a history book, but more of an overarching story, with common threads linking each chapter it feels like a full picture emerges.
It concentrates more on the histories of the "major" countries than anything else and does tend to tell the story from a North-American perspective, but what ground it did cover was done very well. I wouldn't have minded a more indepth treatment of the "minor" countries (Ecuador, Uruguay, Belize, El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica, Cuba, Haiti etc.), but what can you do?
The rest of the time has been pretty idle, though I did manage to read
Stardust by Neil Gaiman and
Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones.
Stardust was fantastic, if a bit short. It's somewhat different to the movie in several respects, but it was just as good in many ways and better in others. Neil Gaiman has a very easygoing, conversational style of writing and he doesn't waste words. The pacing on this book was tight. I recommend it to anyone, especially fans of the movie.
Howl's Moving Castle the novel has a much better constructed narrative than the Miyazaki movie, without any of the preachy anti-war overtones. It fully explains some of the things that were only hinted at in the book and fleshes out the characters much better. It's a fun, lighthearted story, but I felt as though it was a little rushed toward the end - as though the author were running out of time or words. Some of the "big reveals" should have happened earlier, when they would have made sense.
Still, it's a must-read for fans of the movie.
