"If you want a Honduran passport there are two options: you‘re either a real Honduran or you go to jail. The worst thing for Mazatzin is that the men from the government of the country of Honduras think he‘s made fun of the country of Honduras. That‘s what the vice president said, that he also made fun of them by trying to use the ridiculous name of Franklin Gómez. The vice president was called Elvis Martínez."
"Human remains aren‘t kept in baskets or crates of vintage brandy but in plastic bags from the supermarket, as if you could buy human remains in the supermarket. At the most you can buy cow, pig, or chicken remains in the supermarket. I think if they sold severed heads in the supermarket people would use them to make pozole."
"I always cry when I get these pains, but I‘m not a faggot. Being ill is different from being a faggot. If you‘re ill it‘s all right to cry, Yolcaut told me."
"We don‘t use our tigers for suicides or for murders. Miztli and Chichilkuali do the murders with orifices made from bullets. I don‘t know how we do the suicides, but we don‘t do them with tigers. We use the tigers for eating the corpses. And we use our lion for that, too."
"It seems like the country of Liberia is a disastrous country. Mexico is a disastrous country, too. It‘s such a disastrous country that you can‘t get hold of a Liberian pygmy hippopotamus. Actually, that‘s what you call being a third-world country."
"I like French people because they take off the crown before they cut off their kings‘ heads. That way the crown doesn‘t get dented and you can keep it in a museum in Paris or sell it to someone with lots of money, like us."
It's finally spring here, and early spring is Juan Pablo Villalobo season.
"The most normal thing to do is to cut off the head, although, actually, you can cut anything. It‘s because of the neck. If we didn‘t have a neck it would be different. It might be normal to cut bodies in half down the middle so as to have two corpses. But we have a neck and this is a really big temptation. Especially for French people."
"Some people say I‘m precocious. They say it mainly because they think I know difficult words for a little boy. Some of the difficult words I know are: sordid, disastrous, immaculate, pathetic, and devastating. There aren‘t really that many people who say I‘m precocious. The problem is I don‘t know that many people."
pickThis is a fun little book. I think it's technically a novella (under 100 pages). The unreliable narrator is a 7yo boy, obsessed with hats, samurai films, and Liberian pygmy hippos, but is also the son of a Mexican drug lord. It's funny and slightly horrifying when you actually think about it. I kind of loved it. I immediately added another book by the author to my library wish list.
#BookSpinBingo free space
@TheAromaofBooks
pick⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Told from the perspective of Tochtli, an innocent, naive young boy who reads the dictionary, thriving on words like “enigmatic” and “pathetic.” He collects hats, loves samurai, and wants a new exotic animal for their palace‘s menagerie - guilty overcompensation from his Mexican drug lord father, no doubt. The boy is sheltered, but conversely, exposed to so much. This slim novel is a wild ride! Read the glossary, too; it‘s excellent.
pickI read Villalobos' sophomore book Quesadillas nearly 4 years ago. I have never forgotten that quirky gem. It worked perfectly as a novella, feeling neither too short nor too much like an overextended short story. Down the Rabbit Hole is narrated by the samurai film watching & hat obsessed quirky son of a Honduran drug lord. What is interesting to me is how tenuous the line is between the violence of normal childhood development & his environment.
1) Read. And work, I suppose.
2) Mint ice cream.
3) During the evening. I'm usually finished with my obligations for the day & am able to relax more.
#motivationalmonday @Cupcake12
I really leveled up my day with this spectacular haul from the library. The tagged book, Say Nothing & Your House Will Pay are for #NewYearWhoDis @monalyisha @Mitch
pickViolence, drugs, gangland warfare, drug lords and vice- but all told from the view of a 7 yr boy. He's a wonderfully charming, unreliable narrator - showing us how he sees the world, in the language in which he sees it. It was quirky and comical (only for a split second - until you realised the world he is describing with your adult eyes) - but also deeply sad and tense. For only 90 pages - it's left a very deep impression.
Puppy forgot the clocks changed last night and we were meant to have an extra hour in bed! He‘s final crashed on the sofa - so I‘m reading for tomorrow‘s Bookclub meet-up. It‘s a short novella about a Mexican drug cartel told from the viewpoint of a 7 yr old. Love it when Bookclub takes you out of your comfort zones!
pickAs a Latin American history and culture enthusiast, I loved this dark yet playful, funny insight into the world of Mexican drug cartels. Simple vocabulary and sentence structures from a child‘s mind make it a PERFECT read for Spanish second language learners. Also, it‘s free on iBooks!
❤️ this opening to the novella!
#QuoteOfTheDay
Twitter just brought this Mexican novella—about a Mexican drug lord‘s kid who wants a pygmy hippo from Liberia as a pet—to my attention and since I see I have the ebook on Scribd I think I‘ll read it pretty much immediately! I also now see that @Marchpane has read and liked it.
The best part of any day is when an Amazon package arrives!
pickWhat a beautifully written but heartbreaking book. Innocence lost and the poor innocent doesn't even know. What happens when you grow up in a completely toxic world thinking it's normal.
#mexicanwriters #maybookflowers
Drug wars as seen through the eyes of a small child, who happens to be the son of an Escobar-style drug lord.
Little Tochtli lives in a palace and all he wants is a pygmy hippopotamus for his private zoo. This book is darkly funny and chilling at the same time. I've been meaning to check out the author's other work.
pickAn odd little book written in the voice of a precocious 7 year old son of a Mexican drug lord.
This was my choice for the #ReadHarder #ReadHarder2017 challenge category "Read a Debut Novel"
"Hair is like a corpse you wear on your head while you're alive."
Subscribed to a very unique small publisher called & Other Stories. I got the intro package. It included the book and mug, a free e-book (I picked All Dogs Are blue and I am subscribed to the next four books they publish. They specialize in translations. This is very promising.
Fiesta en la madriguera | 
