What are you reading now?: January 31, 2026

Wrapping up Twilight of Empire. British Coastal Forces and Automatic Noodle will follow.

Starting The Last Dynasty.

I'm about a third of the way through the lengthy but excellent (if sometimes troubling) Independent People by Halldor Laxness.

I'm still reading Stride Toward Freedom by Martin Luther King, Jr. and The Lost Spells by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris.

I read Southern Mail by Antoine de Saint-Exupery this week. Now I'm about two-thirds of the way through Between Two Rivers by Moudhy al-Rashid.

The Memory of an Elephant – Alex Lasker
4****

It begins when a surgeon on his way to an early operation is driving in torrential rain, so he is going significantly below the speed limit. He’s startled by a looming shape in the darkness and manages to stop his vehicle without hitting the shape or the median. Only when he is fully stopped does he realize that he is looking at the largest elephant he has ever seen. And the elephant is looking right back at him. After a few heart-stopping moments, the bull walks over the median divider and disappears into the rain. What was an elephant doing on the highway? There are no national parks or zoos in the vicinity.

This is an unusual “memoir” … an elderly bull elephant recounts his life as he treks across the African continent, intent on returning to his birthplace. The story goes back and forth in time, from Ishi’s recollections to his current-day trek across the continent.

What a marvelous book! Ishi (the elephant) is a remarkable narrator. Of course, he doesn’t always understand the ways of the two-leggers, with their boom sticks and mechanical birds (rifles and helicopters), but he has a long memory and remembers both those who have been kind to him and those who have harmed him or his family.

Lasker gives the reader a visceral experience by using Ishi’s voice to tell this tale. There are chapters that deal with the significant humans in Ishi’s life, from the Hathaway family (who operate an “orphan farm” in Kenya), to Kamau (the young tribal boy who first found and befriended the baby Ishi), to Gichinga (a sociopath and poacher).

One of my book-club buddies recommended this book for us. We all loved it!

Starting Mystery by Jonathan Kellerman

The new thread is up over here.