'Strange Pilgrims' by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Strange Pilgrims, Gabriel Garcia Marquez (4.0)

This translated title of the book turns out to be quite accurate (it is alternatively known as ‘12 Pilgrims’)– each of the twelve stories held in this book contain strange characters or strange happenings to ordinary characters and they all are pilgrims of sorts as we find them outside of their birth countries. While many of the short stories dwell on death, they are more uplifting in spirit than you would expect, such as the woman who suspects she is dying so she teaches her dog to cry upon her grave. Marquez looks at young and old with a similar lens to describe the magical events in their life as they travel amongst foreigners. The most disturbing happens to also be my favorite: ‘I Only Came to Use the Phone’ is the story of a young wife whose car breaks down. She hitches a ride with a bus full of women and mistakenly gets put in an insane asylum. As with other Marquez works, you often need to suspend reality and just enjoy where the colorful prose takes you.

'Fantasyland' by Kurt Andersen

Fantasyland, Kurt Andersen (2.0)

My low scoring review for this book comes with a caveat: I know many people have and will enjoy reading it. The premise was fascinating – a discussion of how we got to the current state of fake news, science denying, etc. by reviewing the history of the US as far back as the Salem witch trials. Unfortunately, my expectation for a non-fiction book filled with statistics is that the data is backed up with sources. There were many footnotes, but they were additional rants, not cited references. This was particularly troublesome when I got to a fact that was doubtful or wrong, all succeeding facts were cast in that light. Also, while I agreed with much of Mr. Anderson’s assertions, the childish words he used in his disrespect for virtually everyone who did not agree with him was distracting and too informal for a serious book. If you are aghast at much of what is going on in our politics and news with regards to facts and need a cathartic read to validate those feelings – this book will be enjoyable. Ironically, just don’t expect actual fact checking for those facts in the book.