{"id":3771,"date":"2017-10-12T22:09:38","date_gmt":"2017-10-12T22:09:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/77.104.180.154\/~andrewdo\/blog\/?p=3771"},"modified":"2017-10-12T22:12:52","modified_gmt":"2017-10-12T22:12:52","slug":"not-quite-paradise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/2017\/10\/12\/not-quite-paradise\/","title":{"rendered":"Not Quite Paradise"},"content":{"rendered":"
I picked up the audio version of this book after returning from our recent holiday in Sri Lanka. I had so many lingering thoughts about the country and I wanted to get another perspective before it all faded out of my memory.<\/p>\n

This is very different to Elephant Complex<\/em><\/a>, a book that I started before we departed and had accompanied me on my journey. Not Quite Paradise<\/em> takes a much more personal approach. The book is narrated by the author who moved from Arizona, USA to Sri Lanka with her 15-year old son soon after 9\/11. The first part of the book serves as a pretty straightforward travel diary. I had seen a review on Goodreads<\/a> which said that the book was \u201ca so-so travelogue by another author whose observations are rather standard\u201d but for me it was lovely to indulge a little bit in hearing someone talk first hand about places that we ourselves had recently visited<\/a> and and to understand what it had felt like for her. However, as another reviewer notes<\/a>, she \u201cnever explains what initially attracted her to Sri Lanka\u201d and this remains a mystery. It must have been a great upheaval for her teenage son; they eventually decide that he will return home while she stays on for a little longer. Nothing very dramatic happens throughout this part of the book, but the pleasure is in the small details of life and interactions that she has with the people, her house and the landscape.<\/p>\n

The second half is quite different. It starts during Christmas 2004 where she hears the awful news of the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami<\/a> which brought devastation and death to the island. She is almost immediately compelled to return there to\u2026I\u2019m not quite sure what. See it first-hand? Report on the damage? Complete the book? She doesn\u2019t give too much away about why<\/em> she wanted to make the journey, but make it she did, and her writing covers a much broader scope of the island and its recent history as she travels around in this part of the book. Some of the accounts of the tsunami are devastating, even more so as they are weaved together with details and evidence of the long Sri Lankan Civil War<\/a>. The book was a useful compliment to the topics covered in Elephant Complex<\/em> and I was grateful to it filling in quite a few gaps in my knowledge and clearing up my misunderstandings from the other, denser, book. The timeline covered stops short of the brutal end of the civil war and felt slightly unfinished because of it.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think this will ever be held up as one of the greatest travelogues of all time but I did find it a very pleasant read \u2014 just what I was looking for after my own Sri Lankan journey.<\/p><\/div>\n

I picked up the audio version of this book after returning from our recent holiday in Sri Lanka. I had so many lingering thoughts about the country and I wanted to get another perspective before it all faded out of my memory. This is very different to Elephant Complex, a book that I started before […]<\/div>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"webmentions_disabled_pings":false,"webmentions_disabled":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,17],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3771","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-books","7":"category-travel","8":"h-entry","10":"hentry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3492,"url":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/2017\/09\/09\/elephant-complex-travels-in-sri-lanka\/","url_meta":{"origin":3771,"position":0},"title":"Elephant Complex: Travels in Sri Lanka","author":"Andrew Doran","date":"9 September 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Read this book before and during my holiday in Sri Lanka. Gives an excellent overview of the country and its history which reveals itself to the reader gradually, culminating in an account of the end of the civil war. The chapters are sequenced and themed in a general anti-clockwise journey\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Books"","block_context":{"text":"Books","link":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/category\/books\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/29114247.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3500,"url":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/2017\/09\/11\/3500\/","url_meta":{"origin":3771,"position":1},"title":"Back from Sri Lanka for\u2026","author":"Andrew Doran","date":"11 September 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Back from Sri Lanka for two weeks and still trying to persuade my wife that this is a great idea. The kids are on-board with the plan, but my argument that it is a car that we can finally park on our extraordinarily narrow driveway just isn't cutting it.","rel":"","context":"In "Snippets"","block_context":{"text":"Snippets","link":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/category\/snippets\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11003,"url":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/2024\/07\/15\/11003\/","url_meta":{"origin":3771,"position":2},"title":"\ud83d\udcda Finished reading PWNED by\u2026","author":"Andrew Doran","date":"15 July 2024","format":"status","excerpt":"\ud83d\udcda Finished reading PWNED by Troy Hunt. I can\u2019t quite remember how I stumbled across his work; it was probably via a link from a Twitter post to his brilliant ';--have i been pwned? service. It\u2019s been fascinating to learn about data breaches and disclosure processes, Internet of Things adventures,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Snippets"","block_context":{"text":"Snippets","link":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/category\/snippets\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"\u201cA suggestion for anyone interested in following my approach: write a blog and write about what you're doing. That doesn't mean talking about the sensitive internal bits of your organisation, it means demonstrating knowledge about the stuff you'll have in your CV anyway. This is also relevant to my Ghost who codes blog post: by writing about what you're doing you'll do it more effectively, you'll help other people with the same challenges and you'll build your own profile. See how all that ties together so nicely? 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I was intrigued, particularly as it has been created in conjunction with the team behind the excellent Rough Guide travel books, but didn't\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Web"","block_context":{"text":"Web","link":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/category\/web\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8487,"url":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/2022\/01\/02\/journal-of-a-novel-the-east-of-eden-letters-by-john-steinbeck\/","url_meta":{"origin":3771,"position":4},"title":"\ud83d\udcda Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters by John Steinbeck","author":"Andrew Doran","date":"2 January 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"This is a wonderful companion to the East of Eden novel. I am so glad I read it straight after, as I could still recall exactly the chapters and characters that Steinbeck refers to in his notes. All of the notes are addressed to Pascal Covici, Steinbeck\u2019s editor. 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