Plants Don’t Drink Coffee by Unai Elorriaga
My rating: 4/5 cats
archipelago’s existence means good news for book-as-object fetishists and bad news for kindle/nook/robo-reader or whatever i-pad machine is happening right now, no matter how fun and swooshily elegant they make the hand gestures look.
archipelago just makes gorgeous books. they make books you want a windowseat for; to curl up in with an oversized mug of tea and a blankie and a single cookie on a gold-rimmed plate, more for show than sustenance. thick, textured paper, sophisticated european-style covers—mmmm….
fuck you, kindle.
i mean, you can read them on a kindle:
Plants don’t drink coffee. They don’t like coffee, and neither do flowers and trees. Birds don’t like it either. My aunt told me. I do. Sometimes I don’t breathe while i drink my cafe con leche. One whole mug. It’s a big mug. I down the whole mug every morning, without taking a breath. That’s a record of mine. Maybe I’m the only one in the world who holds that record.
but, see, if i read that on a kindle, (shudder to think), i would automatically impart a robot voice to it, and it would lose the charm of the child-narrator. it would sound more like stephen hawking, and it would be unavoidable.
but the book is great; i love the child-logic of the part narrated by tomas:
Then there are insects. Insects are 200 million years old. My cousin Ines told me that. Ines knows a lot about insects. Maybe Ines knows more about insects than anyone in the world. Insects are: butterflies, beetles, and dragonflies, and they are 200 million years old. That’s why insects are so small, because they are very old. Old people are also often smaller than young people. They are not smaller than children, because children are the smallest people of all. Especially just after they’ve been born. But old people are also very small, compared to young people. Piedad is an old lady i know. And she is very small, because she is old. My aunt told me Piedad is eighty-two years old. And insects are 200 million years old. That’s why they are so small.
i think that is charming. but if you don’t, the book isn’t all like that. it is the story of a family, with different parts of the story told in different characters’ voices. this is another part i liked, BUT I DO NOT ADVOCATE THE PRACTICE:
Every time Mateo went to the library to steal books he brought some cardboard in his pocket. Something bright; red cardboard, or neon green or yellow. And Mateo would leave the cardboard on the shelf he’d taken the book from, and write: “I’ve stolen this book.” Then he’d write the author’s name, the title of the book, the publisher, the year it was published and, if he had time, the ISBN too.
also kudos for not saying “ISBN number,” which i do all the time, but i cringe inside while it is happening.
dunno—this book is charming, and i love that this publisher exists to give me books from distant lands that other publishers are not making available, even though it is one of those publishers that i own about 30 books from, and have read only a fraction.
but—do—go – support, etc…
it’s the weekend—read a book.
read my book reviews on goodreads
