Three Weeks in December

I would be very impressed if I saw an obituary that read: "James Gibson, 33, eaten by a lion, services to be held at Hodapp Funeral home on Saturday at 1:00 p.m."  That would be an amazing obituary.  It would almost be worth it.  The odds that I would be eaten by an African lion are pretty small.  I'll probably never go to Africa and I very rarely go to the zoo.  The few times I've been to the zoo, I've never crossed the "idiot moat" to be eaten by said lion.  What's much more likely to happen to me, is for my larger-than-average cat to trip me, I fall down my basement steps, crack my head open and die of a subdermal hematoma.  Not only is that more likely, it is probable, considering he slide tackles me twice a month. 

Three Weeks in December is loosely based on a true story about  lions who ate humans but those hungry hungry lions were never caught.  This part of the story is set at the turn of the 20th century and the lions ate some of the immigrant workers for the East African Railroad.  I would think that human meat is not like wildebeest--I mean that's good eating--human meat must be like one Buffalo Wild Wing, kind of stringy, not much meat, spicy but slightly addictive.  Also, only a quarter on Tuesday.

This book has another story, from another point of view, set in the early 21st century about an ethnobotonist searching for a medicinal vine among mountain gorillas in the Congo.  She has Asperger's and eats a lot of tofu.  I take umbrage here, I don't think tofu, perishable fermented bean blocks, travel well in luggage from America to the heart of the African Congo.  My clean clothes smell like mountain gorilla after a five hour plane ride from Canada.  The author read 90 books of research to write this novel, but I think she neglected to research the perishable qualities of tofu.  I think there is a book on it called Blocks of Death.

For as exciting as this book seems with gorillas, lions and tofu, its just ok.  It doesn't have that special "spark" that makes me want to keep reading. It took me months to finish it even though its only 353 pages.  So keep that in mind when you are perusing the mountain gorilla based novels section in the bookstore.

Drinks:  Malaria is a big plot point in this book so you should drink with a nice gin and tonic.  You should know that modern tonic water has only negligible amounts of quinine so you should drink a whole bunch of them just to be safe.