The Monk of Mokha by Dave Eggers
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
I struggled to make my way through this audiobook, but the reader’s aggravating breathless awestruck delivery of every sentence thwarted my attempts. It’s a mundane non-fiction report about coffee history and commodity pricing, at least at the beginning, so why the jaw-dropping amazement at every line? The author suggests that any decent human being should “step up” and pay eight dollars for a cup of arabica coffee – its “real price” – so than Yemeni farmers can get paid fairly for coffee and stop growing khat. Maybe I’m morally bereft, but I’m quite happy with my daily two cups of Taster’s Choice instant for 15 cents a cup or whatever it costs. No, I don’t care about the fate of Yemeni farmers; if they prefer to grow khat, that’s fine with me. This is the same reader for this author’s earlier book The Circle and I couldn’t make it through that one for the same reason.