boring books

What is it with profs assigning boring ass books lately? I'm sorry, but at this point, the Human Rights: Politics & Practice book I'm reading along with the class I'm TAing for is seeming pretty damn interesting.  Which is saying a lot, on account of reading the human rights text is all review-- I know all of this already, it's just seeing what the students should know for their responses. 

So, the first week of school, I read the lovely lovely Ananya Roy's Poverty Capital.  Now, Roy was a wonderful speaker-- I had the distinct pleasuring of hearing her lecture on her book just after I read the text.  I understand her point in throwing so many different stories about microfinance at the reader, making us recognize that there is no one microfinance narrative and all, but the whole thing was quite overwhelming.  So many numbers, statistics, in short, DATA.  Oh my!  For a qualitative researcher (and poet), the whole book was just a headache waiting to migraine-ify.

Not to say that I didn't get quite a lot out of it.  I certainly learned a lot, it's just that it was hard to take everything in.  I'm sure I also lost quite a bit!

Then came this weekend's reading, which was DuPuis' Nature's Perfect Food, a book about... wait for it... milk.  You may be surprised to learn that milk isn't half as interesting as it sounds.  I might then add that milk sounds not a bit interesting to me, so you can imagine how exciting this weekend was.  The only time I got really excited was when I found out that the chemicals used to produce strawberries are extremely toxic, and that it is widely agreed upon that nobody ought eat nonorganic strawberries.  Oh noes!  They don't sell organic strawberries at my grocery store!  Where the devil can I procure these sweet-lipped beauties?  (wait, that sounded a bit like the opening to a romance that wants to be a porno).

Thank goodness that book is over.  But still I am reading yet another book for the human rights class I'm TAing for, which sounds interesting, as it's about a woman who does human rights work in Brazil.  Unfortunately, at page 40, she has pretty much just gone around being horny and never getting laid.  It's all quite boring.  I'm quite curious when this is actually going to teach me something.  It is literally the most boring of the three very boring books I've listed.  The book is called Dance Lest We All Fall Down, but, despite the lovely title, it is agonizing!  I'm hoping it will pick up when she starts doing activist work of some kind.  Or maybe she'll actually get laid as opposed to just drooling over random men and occasionally kissing them (before promptly leaving the country).

Anyway, I'm hoping to get the readings for HR done tonight, so I can focus on Susan Sontag's Regarding the Pain of Others tomorrow.  Oooh, now there is a page turner!  I will write more on it when I actually... you know... read it... In the mean time, wish me luck with Dance...! ¡Ay carajo!