Recently finished books?

[Loki]

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer- Mark Twain ***00

A rather enjoyable and sometimes funny novel. I liked Twain's style, and the narrator he used. I haven't read Huckleberry Finn but I've seen that he switches to a first person narrator.
The only thing was that I've found it difficult at times to read (just for the lexis and the way the boys talk).
Tom is a rather quixotic character (just as Catherine in Northanger Abbey), which made me like him even more!

[learna]

The moment of painting the fence was my favourite part of the book (when I was a child).

[Bjorn]

Christer Hermansson, Ich bin ein Bibliothekar! ****0, Kulturchefen ***00 (Sweden)

Sharp but increasingly self-indulgent satire of cultural and office-space politics, not too far from PC Jersild.

[beelzebubbles]

Cranford by Elisabeth Gaskell (That's Mrs. Gaskell to you.)

***00

It's a gently comic novel with a sometimes mildly ironic tone about the society of aging spinsters and widows living in genteel poverty and holding on to their notions of aristocratic values.

It was a very pleasant read and I liked Mrs. Gaskell's voice or rather her narrator Mary Smith's voice that of a young spinster who visits a pair of older sisters in Cranford. The only thing that got me down about this book was that it got a too syrupy towards the end. I know Miss Matty has to be menaced with the poorhouse and that since it is a light comic novel she is saved from her fate by the love others have for her; but does she have to be quite so pathetic, otherworldly, incapable and superlatively good and sweet. It's all a little much at the end.

[Eric]

Sailing Against the Wind: Jaan Kross ****0

A novel about a man from a remote island who lost his hand in a firework accident as a teenager. Despite his handicap he become a precision lens and mirror polisher. These items are intended for fitting into astronomical telescopes. He moves to Germany to enable him to continue his work in a country where it will be appreciated. But he finds that although he becomes rather successful at his trade, he is treated as a foreigner there, while his creations, now not only lenses and mirrors, but the complex astronomical telescopes themselves, are regarded as "German". And this is all happening in the early 1930s...

The novel is narrated partly in the mind of this man, a reticent and complex character, as he thinks through his life; while a second narrator is writing a book about him after his death, and interviewing people who knew him.

The story of this historical novel is based on the life of a real man, Bernhard Schmidt (1879-1935). It deals with such things as nationality, ethnicity, and belonging; love, pride, and rejection; tenacity and devotion; amateur versus professional; hagiography versus reality; handicap; hierarchy; independence versus dependence. And a few other things.

[Stiffelio]

Sailing Against the Wind: Jaan Kross ****0

A novel about a man from a remote island who lost his hand in a firework accident as a teenager. Despite his handicap he become a precision lens and mirror polisher. These items are intended for fitting into astronomical telescopes. He moves to Germany to enable him to continue his work in a country where it will be appreciated. But he finds that although he becomes rather successful at his trade, he is treated as a foreigner there, while his creations, now not only lenses and mirrors, but the complex astronomical telescopes themselves, are regarded as "German". And this is all happening in the early 1930s...

The novel is narrated partly in the mind of this man, a reticent and complex character, as he thinks through his life; while a second narrator is writing a book about him after his death, and interviewing people who knew him.

The story of this historical novel is based on the life of a real man, Bernhard Schmidt (1879-1935). It deals with such things as nationality, ethnicity, and belonging; love, pride, and rejection; tenacity and devotion; amateur versus professional; hagiography versus reality; handicap; hierarchy; independence versus dependence. And a few other things.

Is this novel already available in English?

[JTolle]

Poems--Marcia Nardi ****0
Canaan--Geoffrey Hill ***00+
For the Unfallen--Geoffrey Hill *****

and this poet, I don't know how I never heard of him (other than that he died when he was only 34), he's astounding, miraculous, sublime:

Labyrinths with Path of Thunder--Christopher Okigbo *****+

[beelzebubbles]

Hey JTolle, print a poem or two in the poetry thread so we can see what this Okigbo is about. I for one would appreciate it.

[JTolle]

Hey JTolle, print a poem or two in the poetry thread so we can see what this Okigbo is about. I for one would appreciate it.

Yep, threw a selection up, and started a Writers thread for him.

[Eric]

No, Stiffelio, I've still got to check through twelve of the thirteen chapters, before I submit it to the publisher. These things take time. This thread is called "Recently finished books?". It doesn't say whether you have written, read, or translated the book in question...

*

Geoffrey Hill seriously interests me, but I haven't found collections by him here in Sweden. Maybe that means that the Nobel committee has bought everything up...

*

I shall have a look at the Okigbo thread, as I didn't manage to get down to Gothenburg for the Africa theme there at the book fair.

[kpjayan]

Umberto Eco - The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana : ****0 typical of his style, appeals to the brain and not to the mind. This book reminds me of Aki Kurismaki's 2002 masterpiece 'A man without a past'

[Manuel76]

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer- Mark Twain ***00

A rather enjoyable and sometimes funny novel. I liked Twain's style, and the narrator he used. I haven't read Huckleberry Finn but I've seen that he switches to a first person narrator.
The only thing was that I've found it difficult at times to read (just for the lexis and the way the boys talk).
Tom is a rather quixotic character (just as Catherine in Northanger Abbey), which made me like him even more!

Try Huckleberry Finn *****++, one of my favorite novels. I'm sure you'll like it. There Huck is wonderful. Tom is no longer a quixotic character but an spoiled, shallow, cruel and selfish creature.

Its a great effect to make him appear at the beggining of the book as a nice and funny child and make him reappear at the end of the book, you see how much you've moved forward with this book, and how you've seen real adventures where people had to risk their own life.

[johnw1]

Memoirs of Hadrian - Marguerite Yourcenar ****0

Brilliantly imagined and researched. A cut above the vast majority of historical novels.

[Mirabell]

Luka and the Lake of Life, Salman Rushdie

need to reread Haroun to give a definite opinion, or to find out more precisely why I am more annoyed than delighted by this.

[Clarissa]

2666 - Roberto Bolano ****0

[Stevie B]

Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie ***00+. Well-written novel set in Nigeria that focuses on a man who is a pillar of the community, but a tyrant at home. I was leaning toward 4 stars, but the book petered out for me a bit at the end. Clearly, however, Adichie establishes herself as a talented young writer from whom we can expect even better things in the future. Her follow-up novel Half of a Yellow Sun is on my want list. Has anyone read it?

[Bjorn]

Clearly, however, Adichie establishes herself as a talented young writer from whom we can expect even better things in the future. Her follow-up novel Half of a Yellow Sun is on my want list. Has anyone read it?
Yup. I quite liked it, though I thought it could have used a little more focus and a little less journalism-like writing. A very solid novel, grabbed me enough that I finished it in about 3-4 days.

[Elie]

Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie ***00+. Well-written novel set in Nigeria that focuses on a man who is a pillar of the community, but a tyrant at home. I was leaning toward 4 stars, but the book petered out for me a bit at the end. Clearly, however, Adichie establishes herself as a talented young writer from whom we can expect even better things in the future. Her follow-up novel Half of a Yellow Sun is on my want list. Has anyone read it?

Yes, I adored it. It kept me up all night finishing it and made me cry in a couple of places. I am a bit of a wuss though.

[mesnalty]

Her follow-up novel Half of a Yellow Sun is on my want list. Has anyone read it?

I was especially impressed by her ability to capture social interactions. In the first half of the book in particular, the characters simply leapt off the page because of her incisive descriptions of their behaviour.

[kpjayan]

Yes. Half of a Yellow Sun, was better than the Purple Hibiscus. However,her latest short story collection wasn't very impressive.

[Bjorn]

Some Swedish non-fiction. Andreas Ekstr?m's Google-koden (The Google Code), a fascinating and fair look at how one company essentially took over the internet and what they're doing with it, and Lena Sundstr?m's V?rldens lyckligaste folk (The World's Happiest People), a look at how one openly xenophobic party managed to set the debate agenda in Denmark until all parties started imitating them. Both ****0.

[Daniel del Real]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/pt.gif Jos? Saramago, Memorial do Convento *****+
Re-read. First time I read it I couldn't fully appreciate what an enormous masterpiece this book is. Now, almost 8 years later I found this novel fascinating, breath taking and one of the most intimate works that Saramago procuced. I was able to see this hand, his thoughts, his soul in so many of the phrases of this book, no wonder why it was his favourite book and decided to be cremated with him.
I'll keep on re-reading him and offering him the biggest tribute a writer can have: to be read and admired.

[Stevie B]

Thanks for all of the feedback on Half of a Yellow Sun. Great to see a number of enthusiastic responses about the novel. I look forward to reading it in the future.

[Loki]

The Old Man and the Sea- Ernest Hemingway ****0


A simple story, about an old man, a fish and a boy. A simple style, but very beautiful and almost moving at times.
I really liked this novella, although while I was reading on I thought that it would have ended differently. I also wished it didn't end so soon.

[JTolle]

360 Degree Diary--Luis Goytisolo *****

An affirming work for anyone who has chosen to pursue an art in any way, either as an academic or actually as an artist, or whatever else, someone who has dedicated or given themselves over to aesthetics and understanding and the pursuit of knowledge. L. Goytisolo bemoans much of what he thinks has been lost, but remains faithful to a sense of the inherent beauty of humanity, and art's essential role as its educator and lover. Could use some editing though.

[Mirabell]

An Experiment in Love, Hilary Mantel

Amazing. Just amazing.

[Mirabell]

Swamp Thing: The Curse, Alan Moore, Steven Bissette, John Totleben et al.

Swamp Thing: A Murder of Crows, Alan Moore, Steven Bissette, John Totleben et al.

Green Lantern: Rebirth, Geoff Johns et al.

American Born Chinese, Gene Luen Yang



all four absolutely excellent.

[peter_d]

Secret lives - Ngugi Wa Thiong'o *****

Excellent collection of short stories from his early years. The way Ngugi writes from a wide range of different perspectives is very impressive.

[My name is red]

The inheritance of loss-Kiran Desai
Books like this is the reason why i read,why i keep reading.I keep reading just to find something like this.It became my favourite book now.I can't put into words how impressed i'm.I was carried away.Very strong,powerfull...Absoutely a masterpiece! Now every other book feels kinda lame to me,i think i just have to wait and digest it.In my language this was the first Desai book.I can't wait for others.
A good book is what makes me wanna hug the writer at the end.I want to hug Kiran Desai for such a brilliant,increadible book.
I need to stop now,i can go on like that all day...Amazing,amazing,amaz....******************** ************************************************** and so on

[Mirabell]

The inheritance of loss-Kiran Desai
Books like this is the reason why i read,why i keep reading.I keep reading just to find something like this.It became my favourite book now.I can't put into words how impressed i'm.I was carried away.Very strong,powerfull...Absoutely a masterpiece! Now every other book feels kinda lame to me,i think i just have to wait and digest it.In my language this was the first Desai book.I can't wait for others.
A good book is what makes me wanna hug the writer at the end.I want to hug Kiran Desai for such a brilliant,increadible book.
I need to stop now,i can go on like that all day...Amazing,amazing,amaz....******************** ************************************************** and so on

very odd. I wanted to cut off my toes from boredom halfway through. It starts nicely enough, but at a certain point...

[Stewart]

very odd. I wanted to cut off my toes from boredom halfway through. It starts nicely enough, but at a certain point...
I never got further than the opening pages. I've still kept my copy on the off chance that I may yet attempt it again.

[Clarissa]

I enjoyed it but would not go quite as far as My Name is Red in her/his appreciation. A good read but no more than that

[Loki]

Agnes Grey- Anne Bronte ***00+

A novel about a governess, told in the first person. A simple story actually, without nothing extraordinary happening. But I liked it, and also Anne Bronte's voice, which addresses the reader (in a similar way to her elder sister Charlotte).

It's a pity though that the fact that Agnes is a governess is not relevant for the second half of the novel. It seems as though Anne forgets Agnes's job. Also, I would have liked to see the school she opens with her mother more described, but instead is just mentioned.

Having now read a novel by each of the Bronte sisters, I think I liked Charlotte's Jane Eyre more than the Emily's Wuthering Heights and Anne's Agnes Grey.

[My name is red]

very odd. I wanted to cut off my toes from boredom halfway through. It starts nicely enough, but at a certain point...
Probably it's a matter of cultural differance or interest.It's very valuable book not only for the joy of reading but also to understand and feel the colonial policy's effect on people and on their psychology today.That's what i was interested to see.I got more.
If you can't relate to the feeling of the book it's hard to get going.I understand that.

[Flower]

Karl Ove Knausg?rd Min Kamp

I enjoyed this book tremendously!

One thing I noticed besides his great talent for storytelling, was that he made distinctions between how he experienced things as a child or teenager and how he saw them today and at times laughting at himself for being so naive. I honestly don't think I have noticed this before in a writer.
Of course I have read books before about an author looking back at his life but not in the same way. You got a good idea of how things effected him as a child and how they effect him differently as an adult.

Cannot wait for no. 2 in the serie "Min kamp" will be published.

****0+

[Daniel del Real]

very odd. I wanted to cut off my toes from boredom halfway through. It starts nicely enough, but at a certain point...

Agree, I really really tried as much as possible to keep expectations high, but as I advanced every line made tear them down. Hard for me to finish it as it became lame and extremely boring to the end.

[Daniel del Real]

After a month I wasn't able to finish one single book this is what I did on my weekend:

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/hu.gif Sandor Marai, Esther's Inheritance ****0
I really enjoy the prose of Marai. He's been my greatest discovery of 2010. The way he examines carefully the characters and their ideals in a smooth simple way is amazing. He's a true master regarding human feelings and ideas.

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/cl.gif Roberto Bola?o, Monsieur Pain ****0
Bola?o knows how to create a great atmosphere, added with interest characters and situations that keep you always interested in the reading. It lacks the depth and intelligence of his major works but still a very entertaining and intense novel of his early ages

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/it.gif Alessandro Baricco, Ocean Sea ***00
I had a lot of expectations about this novel I've wanted to read for years. Now almost all of them have fallen to a big disappointment as I still don't know what the author tried to do with this book. A big influence on Perec is perceived and some good ideas and concepts are transfered to the voice of his characters. However characters also lack depth, they seem made out of paper with no real id and links to the world described. Two stories that never really get together make this novel a good attempt but after all a failure.

[kpjayan]

Mario Vargas Llosa - Letters to a Young Novelist

Andrei Makine - The Earth and Sky of Jacques Dorme

[Mirabell]

Weep not, Child, Ngugi wa Thiong'o

[Stiffelio]

Weep not, Child, Ngugi wa Thiong'o

Whew, man, you are fast! Is this one of the books you borrowed from the library yesterday?....How did you like it?

[Daniel del Real]

Weep not, Child, Ngugi wa Thiong'o

I remember reading that book for an English class back in high school. Had no idea it was from Thiong'o until a year ago I guess. I searched for the book and found it but I think mine is an abridged edition. Don't remember much about the plot but I remember liking it when I read it.

[learna]

Dreams of My Russian Summers by Andre? Makine.

[Daniel del Real]

Dreams of My Russian Summers by Andre? Makine.

Learna, maybe you can enlighten us on how you pronounce his last name. I've always have that doubt.

[learna]

Learna, maybe you can enlighten us on how you pronounce his last name. I've always have that doubt.

Daniel, if use an English transcription we can write his last name as [mΛ'ki:n].

[Mirabell]

I finished a reread of

Der Turm, Uwe Tellkamp

still not good.

[Clarissa]

World's Fair - E.L.Doctorow ***00

I enjoyed his Ragtime, so when I saw this in the secondhand bookshop I bought it.

However, it is nowhere near as good as Henry Roth's Call It Sleep in the same vein. Same venue, same period - the Doctorow is OK but the Roth is a masterpiece!

[A Son Unique]

Boris Vian - Foam of the Daze
This starts off breezy and mildly comical - some casual blasphemy here, a piano engineered to function as a drink mixer (the drinks depending on the melodies played) there ? before sliding into full-scale tragedy. The surreal imagery throughout is imaginative, and serves the story quite well. A red herring of dissing Sartre (one of the heroes goes bankrupt and winds up dead for blowing all his money on the works of a certain Jean-Sol Partre) ? I liked this quite a bit, perhaps the second part not as good as the first. I'll probably check out more Vian later, so recommendations are welcomed.

Karel Capek - War of the Newts
Good stuff. Allegories can a lot of times be boring - when you get the gist of what the story is supposed to represent, it's fairly easy to see where it's going ? and although this may be the case with War of the Newts Capek keeps it fresh through constantly switching between viewpoints and styles, frequently breaking the fourth wall when it serves the story. Great satire and commentary on the political climate of 1930s Europe. Best is probably the second part, which consists almost in its entirety of newspaper clippings from a variety of sources and even languages. I'd like to read more like this.

[Bjorn]

William Gibson, Zero History (US) ***00

Weakest so far in the Bigend trilogy (?). Lots of Gibson's patented sharp X-ray vision of how technology plays with our society and vice versa, but the plot is getting really thin by now.

Torgny Lindgren, Minnen (Sweden) *****

Memoirs by our, I'm pretty sure now, greatest living writer. Possibly largely fictional. Doesn't really matter; as he has one character... sorry, real person say, "why do we need lies when we have fiction?"

[Psychosis]

Le Grand Meaulnes, by Alain-Fournier ***00

The plot wasn't as terrific as I thought it would be.

[Clarissa]

It's not the plot of Le Grand Meaulnes that made this into a classic, it is the beauty of the writing and the atmosphere that Alain Fournier created. I read it in French and found it pure magic.

[Psychosis]

It's not the plot of Le Grand Meaulnes that made this into a classic, it is the beauty of the writing and the atmosphere that Alain Fournier created. I read it in French and found it pure magic.

His narrative style didn't appeal me, sometimes I found it too trivial, the adjective right to the expected noun, the pace sometimes too slow and the atmosphere not "magical" enough, at least not for a guy like me who lived in the countryside for 15 years and have so wonderful memories. In my opinion, there are few ethereal paragraphs which match your description. All in all, his prose didn't trigger my imagination as I thought it would.

Of course, sometimes translations (I've read a portuguese one) turn a nice butterfly into a not so lovely maggot. ;)

Well, at least I'll remember the plot for the the strong, wild and independent Meaulnes' personality.

[kpjayan]

The Housekeeper and the Professor - Yoko Ogawa : **000

Disappointed, boring beyond 50 pages.. Mathematics Professor with short term memory and all that...

[Clarissa]

La Fortune de Sila ****0 Fabrice Humbert

A remarkable book from a young French writer. It is on the list for the Prix M?dicis in France. It is beautifully written and is a harsh critique of the money, money, money culture so widespread today in novel form, following the destinies of a number of characters, from Russia, Africa, France, the UK and the USA. It starts with an altercation in a chic restaurant in Paris in which Sila is the waiter and the others the diners and follows them through their individual rise and fall and the links between them that fate engineers.

I have read his previous three and he really does seem to be going from strength to strength. His previous novel, L'Origine de la Violence, was awarded prizes given by the public (Prix des Grandes Ecoles and another one, can't remember who they were). It is coming out in translation in the UK next Spring.

I found this one even better - and so did others as it is up for an 'official' prize to be declared in November.

[leyla]

An Experiment in Love, Hilary Mantel

Amazing. Just amazing.

I loved this too, Mirabell. I'm so pleased Mantel's Wolf Hall brought her to the attention of many readers because I think she's been writing quietly brilliant books for years.

[leyla]

I've just finished Skippy Dies by Paul Murray, which was longlisted for this year's Man Booker prize. It's a tragi-comedy and for me was the funniest book I've read so far from the longlist. I wrote a review of it here:

http://www,rocksbackpagesblogs.com/?author=20

I am now reading James Robertson's And The Land Lay Still, which is a novel set against the background of Scotland's history. Since I've been living in Scotland since I was 19 it's about time I learnt the minutiae of Scottish history, though that's not why I picked it up - I chose it because I loved his last book, The Testament of Gideon Mack.

[beelzebubbles]

I recently finished reading

***00The Plague by Albert Camus I liked it but was not in love with it.

***00The Wolves of the Crescent Moon by Yousef Al-Mohaimeed It's about a one eyed boy, a one-eared Bedouin and a castrated slave. It contains beautiful metaphors which I should have stolen for future use.:D

****0The House of Paper by Carlos Maria Dominguez. I really liked this pithy little book about a bibliophile who built a house of books.

Thanks for the suggestions Refus de Sejour.

[JTolle]

I recently finished reading

***00The Plague by Albert Camus I liked it but was not in love with it.

***00The Wolves of the Crescent Moon by Yousef Al-Mohaimeed It's about a one eyed boy, a one-eared Bedouin and a castrated slave. It contains beautiful metaphors which I should have stolen for future use.:D

****0The House of Paper by Carlos Maria Dominguez. I really liked this pithy little book about a bibliophile who built a house of books.

Thanks for the suggestions J.Tolle.

No problem, but I don't think I was the one who recommended these books. (Maybe the Camus?)

[learna]

Novel with cocaine by M. Ageev.

Emotionally impressive, its phsychological deep reminds me of Dostoevsky. As for a style... its beauty can associate - in some way -with Nabokov's one in wonderful images.

Altai, thank you for turning our attention to this novel.

*****+

[Daniel del Real]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/sy.gif Adonis, This is my Name ****0

This book contains three long poems: Prologue to the Kings of Taifas History, Funeral of New York and the poem that entitles the book This is my Name. Funeral of New York is amazing. I was less impressed with the other two but probably this is because of all the Islamic and Arabic topics it deals with that I'm not used to. Definitely a good poet that deserves his place in worldwide literature.

[Mirabell]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/sy.gif Adonis, This is my Name ****0

This book contains three long poems: Prologue to the Kings of Taifas History, Funeral of New York and the poem that entitles the book This is my Name. Funeral of New York is amazing. I was less impressed with the other two but probably this is because of all the Islamic and Arabic topics it deals with that I'm not used to. Definitely a good poet that deserves his place in worldwide literature.

isn't this just really great stuff? glad people are reading it.

[Mirabell]

Nemesis, Philip Roth

a master craftsman, whatever I may think of the books as a whole. And this is his best novel in quite a while, better, I think, even than The Plot Against America.

[Eric]

Just read a short book of poems and speeches called Through the Eye of a Needle.

It was written about fifteen years ago by former ANC activist Mathews Phosa, a South African who is now the Treasurer-General of the ANC, which is the ruling political party in South Africa today.

Here is my translation of one nice poem:



A Yes-Man

Always wearing a tie
he sits stiffly
in a black Mercedes-Chrysler
a yes-man

Paces up and down
in the so-called Parliament
that looks like a beer hall
the yes-man

He fills the street
with his big paunch / beer belly
short-necked, fat-necked
a mole in a hole
that there yes-man
It is nice sometimes to see criticism of the establishment. The one expression I didn't get is "a mole in a hole". There must be someone here who knows not only that it means literally but also the connotations. Because translating poetry is always tricky. No rhyme to cope with here though.

[Daniel del Real]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/hu.gif Magda Szab?, Pil?tus (Title in Magyar) Translated to Spanish as The Ballad of Iza. ****0

A melancholic and subtle novel about memory and territorial belonging.

[Clarissa]

Eric,

Yes Man



a mole in a hole

toad in a hole comes to mind after the beer belly - connotations of the pub?

[beelzebubbles]

****0Nemesis by Philip Roth

Mirabell is right; this is Roth's best novel in quite awhile.

But I love the Master's voice no matter what he,Roth, says.
http://www.boldstreet.org.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/nipper1.jpg

[bogotabibliophile]

I finished Blood Meridian recently. Id picked up The Road (theres a movie of the road btw...anyone seen it?) and quite enjoyed it, then reading a book by Harold Bloom (who adores Mccarthy and calls Blood Meridian the best book by a living American writer) sent me to Blood Meridian. WOW!

Its unlike anything else i read this year or for some time. I cant do better than to say I didnt nessacarily enjoy it but the narrative descriptions, and the characters, were just hypnotising. The Judge must be one of the most impressive characters I can remember reading


Ive only read the 2 mccarthys i mention above but plan to seek out Suttree asap!

[JTolle]

I finished Blood Meridian recently. Id picked up The Road (theres a movie of the road btw...anyone seen it?) and quite enjoyed it, then reading a book by Harold Bloom (who adores Mccarthy and calls Blood Meridian the best book by a living American writer) sent me to Blood Meridian. WOW!

Its unlike anything else i read this year or for some time. I cant do better than to say I didnt nessacarily enjoy it but the narrative descriptions, and the characters, were just hypnotising. The Judge must be one of the most impressive characters I can remember reading


Ive only read the 2 mccarthys i mention above but plan to seek out Suttree asap!

Saw the movie right around when it came out, I was really excited, but the movie turned out to have amazing cinematography and a kind dull everything else. Funny story though, one of the scenes of smoky plains and smouldering desolation (there were so many), I was so caught up in the movie that I actually smelled the smoke, later I found out it was actually just the guy in the front row smoking a joint.

Yep, I read pretty much anything H. Bloom suggests, he knows exactly what I need.

[Daniel del Real]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/pe.gif Mario Vargas Llosa, Lituma en los Andes ****0

Maybe half star more was in order, but I disliked the ending on Tom?s Carre?o's story.

[Ruuh]

Orhan Pamuk - My Name Is Red ****0+

Admittedly, I'm late to the party with this book, but I'm really, really glad I read it. It aroused the same wondrous and magical feeling as the Turkish and Arab folk tales did in my childhood, but with a broader narrative sweep and the refined structure that only an individual author can give. A global tale with a deeply personal story underneath. Gives the same "it couldn't be done in any other way" feeling that all the great stories do. I did find most of the ending bit (the last hundred-or-so pages) somewhat underwhelming, however, as the story didn't wrap itself up as well as it could and didn't resonate with me as strongly as the first half. Still, an amazing book.

I'm thinking of reading The Tunnel by Ernesto Sabato this weekend. It's a short book, so hopefully I'll find enough reading time to read it in a couple of sittings.

[Anton]

Is My Name Is Red in the same vein as Snow? Because I was extremely frustrated by the latter, the dialog seemed quite wooden (don't know if this was a translation problem) and the characters quite static. I ask because I was excited to start Pamuk but am reluctant to give him another try after my experience with Snow.



Orhan Pamuk - My Name Is Red ****0+

Admittedly, I'm late to the party with this book, but I'm really, really glad I read it. It aroused the same wondrous and magical feeling as the Turkish and Arab folk tales did in my childhood, but with a broader narrative sweep and the refined structure that only an individual author can give. A global tale with a deeply personal story underneath. Gives the same "it couldn't be done in any other way" feeling that all the great stories do. I did find most of the ending bit (the last hundred-or-so pages) somewhat underwhelming, however, as the story didn't wrap itself up as well as it could and didn't resonate with me as strongly as the first half. Still, an amazing book.

I'm thinking of reading The Tunnel by Ernesto Sabato this weekend. It's a short book, so hopefully I'll find enough reading time to read it in a couple of sittings.

[learna]

Reread King, Queen, Knave by Vladimir Nabokov, had wanted to compare his style of that period with Ageev's one.

I would read and read Nabokov's prose even do not think what it is about....:rolleyes:

[Stevie B]

My town library's books-on-tape collection is limited in size and scope, and I frequently find myself borrowing titles that I was never eager to rush out and read. On the plus side, however, one can't argue with the price. Free is always a good thing.

I recently finished listening to Angela's Ashes ****0 by Frank McCourt. The reading was done by the author himself and I can't imagine anyone doing a better job. The author had done some acting in his day, and no one could have better replicated the scoldings from his mentally-abusive aunt or the drunken singing of his father "from the north." I really enjoyed hearing the different accents, and I feel I got much more out of the listening experience than I would have had I read the book instead.

[JTolle]

End Zone--Don DeLillo ****0
White Noise--Don DeLillo *****
Autobiography of Red--Anne Carson (reread)

[Stiffelio]

Mario Vargas Llosa: El Para?so en la Otra Esquina (The Way to Paradise)

Excellently written, two-strand novel about painter Paul Gauguin and his socialist/feminist grandmother Flora Trist?n. ****0+

[sirena]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/fr.gif The Age of Discretion - Simone de Beauvoir ***00

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/us.gif The Buccaneers - Edith Wharton ***00

Ivo Andrić - Travnička hronika (Bosnian Chronicle) *****

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/pe.gif In Praise of the Stepmother - Mario Vargas Llosa ***00

[Daniel del Real]

Mario Vargas Llosa: El Para?so en la Otra Esquina (The Way to Paradise)

Excellently written, two-strand novel about painter Paul Gauguin and his socialist/feminist grandmother Flora Trist?n. ****0+

I'm glad you like it. It's almost the same stars I gave it, a great historic novel that inform and keep you entertained.


Is My Name Is Red in the same vein as Snow? Because I was extremely frustrated by the latter, the dialog seemed quite wooden (don't know if this was a translation problem) and the characters quite static. I ask because I was excited to start Pamuk but am reluctant to give him another try after my experience with Snow.

Nope, a totally different novel. My Name is Red is really worth the attempt. The novel is not political as Snow and the characters have more depth. The narrative technique is also stronger and there's a clever argumentation between aesthetics in west and east.
Go for it.

[Daniel del Real]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/af.gif Atiq Rahimi, The Patience Stone ***00+
Interest technique as it can be read as a play, all in one stage; however it is too short and in that lenght there are a lot of interesting points unexplored. Not the depth of thought I expected and a very superficial panorama of the Islamic world.

[My name is red]

Who killed Palomino Molero?
Well,i can't tell you if it was good or not because it was not exactly what i'd like to read,not my style,not the type of reading i enjoy.I believe people who enjoy this style would appreciate or evaluate it better than me.I could only say that it was okay.Not bad,i could tell you that much.But just a simple story for me.Killing time...Nothing more.But at least now i know that he is a good storyteller so i'll give another novel of him a shot soon.Maybe it would be for me.It's just,i've read great reviews on ...Palomino Molero,i didn't keep my hopes high but couldn't see their point either.

[Daniel del Real]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/fi.gif Arto Paasilinna, The Forest of the Hanged Foxes ***00

[Anton]

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll give it a whirl.





Nope, a totally different novel. My Name is Red is really worth the attempt. The novel is not political as Snow and the characters have more depth. The narrative technique is also stronger and there's a clever argumentation between aesthetics in west and east.
Go for it.

[learna]

I have read several short stories by Mikhael Tarkovsky. I wrote that he is Arseni Tarkovsky's grandsone and Andrey Tarkovsky's nephew ( although, he does not like if he is introduced in such way). He lives in Krasnoyarsk Krai, hunts sables and writes books in a Siberian manner.

I would mark his "Лес" (Forest?) which is - I think - partly an autobiographical story.

I think to get back to his fiction a little later and read his novel Kondromo.

[learna]

"Сказ о звонаре московском" (The tale of Moscow?s bell ringer ?) by Anastasia Tsvetaeva.

These are amazing memoirs of Konsnantin Saradzhev who had a unique absolute hearing. Saradzhaev was a son of conductor and violinist ( his mother had been Rakhmaninov's student).


He was known for "his superhuman aural acuity: between two adjacent whole tones, he perceived not just one half tone but a half tone flanked on either side by a hundred and twenty-one flats and a hundred and twenty-one sharps"


The story is written partly as a novel with beautiful and genuine language.

I am not sure that "Сказ о звонаре московском" has been translated into English but - anyway - I highly recommend it.

*****+

[peter_d]

Just read a short book of poems and speeches called Through the Eye of a Needle.

It was written about fifteen years ago by former ANC activist Mathews Phosa, a South African who is now the Treasurer-General of the ANC, which is the ruling political party in South Africa today.

Here is my translation of one nice poem:

It is nice sometimes to see criticism of the establishment. The one expression I didn't get is "a mole in a hole". There must be someone here who knows not only that it means literally but also the connotations. Because translating poetry is always tricky. No rhyme to cope with here though.

Eric, I suppose the original language is Afrikaans is that right (just because I haven't noticed that you master any of the other 11 original languages of South Africa other than English and Afrikaans). If so, could you post the original as well? (Although I don't know if it should be in this thread...).

[sirena]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/pt.gif All the Names - Jos? Saramago ***00

[waxwing]

The Skating Rink by Roberto Bolano ****0

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen ***00

Hadji Murad by Leo Tolstoy *****

[Daniel del Real]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/pt.gif All the Names - Jos? Saramago ***00

You really need to read Saramago more carefully, otherwise you'll continue with the same results all over again. This is a superb book.

[Stiffelio]

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen ***00

You began your review of this book saying it was an engrossing read, yet you only give it three stars :confused:

[waxwing]

You began your review of this book saying it was an engrossing read, yet you only give it three stars :confused:

Franzen is very accomplished at keeping things moving along, he's never boring, and he often uses the trick of working up to a climactic moment at the end of a chapter, then shifting gears at the start of the next chapter. I thought of giving it 4 stars upon completion, but it is fading fast from my memory after only a week. The depth and significance of the novel which some reviewers lauded must have passed me by.

[Mirabell]

You began your review of this book saying it was an engrossing read, yet you only give it three stars :confused:

if you read the whole review, you'd know why. =)

[kpjayan]

Keki Daruwalla -for Pepper and Christ : ***00+

Historical novel based on the Portuguese journey ( of Vasco Da Gama and Later Admiral Cabral) to India.

[sirena]

You really need to read Saramago more carefully, otherwise you'll continue with the same results all over again. This is a superb book.

It's not bad. It's average. It doesn't have strength or emotion of, Blindness, for example. And, that is, what I call a superb book!

[sirena]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/fr.gif The Monologue - Simone de Bevaouir **000

[Loki]

It's not bad. It's average.

You're wrong. You can't judge the book by your standards. You have to give it 5 stars.

[sirena]

You can't judge the book by your standards.

Why?! :confused:

[Loki]

Why?! :confused:

You should ask Daniel del Real.

You really need to read Saramago more carefully, otherwise you'll continue with the same results all over again. This is a superb book.

I was just trying to be ironic.
From what Daniel del Real said you can't say "it's average" if it's a "super book"!

[sirena]

I was just trying to be ironic.
From what Daniel del Real said you can't say "it's average" if it's a "super book"!

So, according to you I'm not allowed to have opinion of my own, right? :eek: Is that what you're trying to say? :( Nobody is forcing you to agree, anyway! :p

[Flower]

Just finished "Wolfhall" by Hillary Mantel.

What can I say? Great book, creative, clever, funny, elegant decriptions of the characters.

Cannot wait till Wolfhall volume II

*****

[Loki]

So, according to you I'm not allowed to have opinion of my own, right? :eek:

Not at all! It's what I've understood from Daniel del Real's post! And it's not the first time that this happens... Maybe I'm interpreting what he said in the wrong way, but it's as if he said that your opinion of that book was wrong, which can't be (opinions are not right or wrong!).



Is that what you're trying to say? :( Nobody is forcing you to agree, anyway! :p
:D

[sirena]

Not at all! It's what I've understood from Daniel del Real's post! And it's not the first time that this happens... Maybe I'm interpreting what he said in the wrong way, but it's as if he said that your opinion of that book was wrong, which can't be (opinions are not right or wrong!).

Oh, now I see it! I guess I misinterpreted your comment. Sorry. :o

Next time, please, put a sarcastic smile (:rolleyes:) as well. ;):D

[Loki]

Oh, now I see it! I guess I misinterpreted your comment. Sorry. :o

Next time, please, put a sarcastic smile (:rolleyes:) as well. ;):D

I thought it was clear enough! Still, I will!:rolleyes:

[Clarissa]

An Experiment in Love - Hilary Mantel ****0

The first from her that I've read, certainly not the last. I avoided her Booker as it's historical fiction; Georgette Heyer put me off the genre when I was in my early teens. I think Mantel may persuade me to try again,

Only four stars because I found the ending and the d?nouement contrived but the writing is superb.

[Daniel del Real]

It's not bad. It's average. It doesn't have strength or emotion of, Blindness, for example. And, that is, what I call a superb book!

Not all books have to be strong or full of emotions. This is a subtle, contempaltive book and have to be read this way. It is too different to Blindness so if you're expecting something similar you won't like All the Names.


You should ask Daniel del Real.


I was just trying to be ironic.
From what Daniel del Real said you can't say "it's average" if it's a "super book"!


I've learnt from the best in here (Mirabell & Eric) :p

What I'm saying or merely proposing is a path to approach the reading of All the Names. Being a different book to Blindness it needs a different appreciation. That's all I'm saying.

[Daniel del Real]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/pt.gif Jos? Saramago, The Stone Raft (re-read) ****0+

[Mirabell]

An Experiment in Love - Hilary Mantel ****0

The first from her that I've read, certainly not the last. I avoided her Booker as it's historical fiction; Georgette Heyer put me off the genre when I was in my early teens. I think Mantel may persuade me to try again,

Only four stars because I found the ending and the d?nouement contrived but the writing is superb.

Yay! Did I convince you to read it?

[Flower]

An Experiment in Love - Hilary Mantel ****0

The first from her that I've read, certainly not the last. I avoided her Booker as it's historical fiction; Georgette Heyer put me off the genre when I was in my early teens. I think Mantel may persuade me to try again,

Only four stars because I found the ending and the d?nouement contrived but the writing is superb.

Now both you and Mirabell have spoken highly of this book and I have just finished "Wolfhall".

On the wishlist it goes....:)

[Eric]

If Eric had just finished a book (meaning novel, on these threads), which of the following would be an Eric statement:

1) This book has the fulsomeness of night, while purporting to describe the underpinnings of canoodlism.

2) This is one of the best books I've ever read.

3) huh wow ace yay johnny vegas flatulence stunning

4) My aunt bought it me for Christmas, hence the hint of eventide.

5) Fucking crap.

6) A very good read; tackled relationships and feelings with sobriety.

7) huh wow arse nay johnny vegas pig farm stupefying

I leave you to guess.

[mesnalty]

8) As I know just enough Kashubian to read this book in the original, I did so. Thus, I am uniquely qualified to judge it. But instead I will go on a lengthy political digression.

[Clarissa]

Yay! Did I convince you to read it?

As I had never heard of it before you praised it so highly, I guess you were instrumental in my buying it. And yes, I have to thank you for the tip.

I shall now be looking into Jirgl! :)

[Ruuh]

Three quick reads (for some reason all the narrators were painters) over the previous week and a half.

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/ar.gif Ernesto Sabato - The Tunnel ***00

The language, story, characters, etc. were all done well, however I felt that its main supposed strength - the protagonist's exquisite descend into mad, perverted rationality and the dark side of the analytical mind - hasn't aged well and didn't play well with me. It might just be the cultural thing, as in my country the novella's view of rationality is quite widespread among intelligentsia, which has chosen to flirt with mysticism instead. I imagine that one's opinion of the book would depend greatly on his/her attitude to its philosophical worldview. Don't be misled, it is written well and a good (albeit not excellent) book in its own right, but its main claim to fame is its philosophical/psychological (not literary) value.

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/ir.gif Marjane Satrapi - Persepolis ****0

A fun, yet emotionally strong kaleidoscope of small vignettes about growing up in Iran (and Vienna) at the end of the last century. Satrapi has a knack for making her characters memorable, and it's the strength of her characters that carries the book throughout. Even Iran becomes one of them, and you feel sorry for the country as you do for its citizens. It's not a particularly deep read, but as far as interesting autobiographical stories go, you could do much worse.

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/kg.gif Chingiz Aytmatov - Jamilya *****

Aytmatov is quickly becoming one of my favourite authors. This one's a lean and beautiful love story, which understands the power and poetry of what's left unsaid. There's not even a hundred lines of dialogue in the novella (and only about five sentences are exchanged by the boy and the girl in question), yet the characters couldn't be more alive. And the affair itself... well, it awes the narrator (who's in love with the girl himself) to such a degree that he decides to let the girl go and step aside to immortalize the lovers in a painting. It's not the greatest book ever, but after the couple of hours it takes you to read the novella, you'll emerge to the outside world with bright eyes and a peculiar lightness in your stomach.

[Daniel del Real]

Three quick reads (for some reason all the narrators were painters) over the previous week and a half.

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/ar.gif Ernesto Sabato - The Tunnel ***00

The language, story, characters, etc. were all done well, however I felt that its main supposed strength - the protagonist's exquisite descend into mad, perverted rationality and the dark side of the analytical mind - hasn't aged well and didn't play well with me. It might just be the cultural thing, as in my country the novella's view of rationality is quite widespread among intelligentsia, which has chosen to flirt with mysticism instead. I imagine that one's opinion of the book would depend greatly on his/her attitude to its philosophical worldview. Don't be misled, it is written well and a good (albeit not excellent) book in its own right, but its main claim to fame is its philosophical/psychological (not literary) value.


I really need to re-read this book as I read it maybe a decade ago and I don't seem to remember everything as I should. As I was a really young reader the first time I tackled it I cannot say how good is this book. I remember liking but that's it. After reading this book I went on to read the other two novels published by Sabato: Sobre Heroes y Tumbas & Abbadon el Exterminador. I really liked On Heroes and Tombs, a novel with certain relation with The Tunnel but as it goes longer is able to dig more in the world of the blind and goes further in their philosophy and possibilities.
Then I raed The Angel of Darkness and I didn't understand a bit at the time.
I realised that Sabato seems to me an author of youth and I need to read it again 10 years later to fully appreciate him. Maybe I'll like him more, maybe less but I need to have a position defined on this author again.

[sirena]

Being a different book to Blindness it needs a different appreciation.

I agree with you completely:

Blindness *****

All the Names ***00

:D

[sirena]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/gb.gif Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall - Kazuo Ishiguro **000

[My name is red]

You're wrong. You can't judge the book by your standards. You have to give it 5 stars.
hahah i like the attitude

[sirena]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/hr.gif Basne o komunizmu iz pera domaćih, divljih i egzotičnih ?ivotinja (Two Underdogs and a Cat : Three Reflections on Communism; three stories out of six) - Slavenka Drakulić ***00

[Mirabell]

dammit, I keep forgetting to post here. among other things, I read (for the Enard review)

Life's Handicap, being stories of mine own people, Rudyard Kipling

[Mirabell]

The Fires of Heaven, Robert Jordan

[Daniel del Real]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/hu.gif Sandor Marai, Casanova in Bolzano ****0
It could reach half star more, I don't know. I'll have to wait and check how it settles down after a week or more.

[Manuel76]

Waiting for the barbarians- Coetzee ****0

It started great but somehow went down the whole way. What seemed to be a very detailed analysis of imperialist phobias and paranoias ended like a sentimental, well intentioned but simplistic allegory. But the style is powerful, very dense, each word giving or trying to give a new revealing detail.

It would have been better if Coetzee had put names to the situation and had avoided to set it in a reference Empire.

I think it's a lesson how to win a Nobel prize, it has all the ingredients, and the fact Coetzee won it before Vargas Llosa, and so many great writers are still waiting it's another proof Nobel prize has very little to do with literary quality. But I know this commentary can be unfair as this is my first novel by the author.

I'll try another one perhaps in the future, after all this is a good novel by any standard, but not a great one.

[Daniel del Real]

Waiting for the barbarians- Coetzee ****0

It started great but somehow went down the whole way. What seemed to be a very detailed analysis of imperialist phobias and paranoias ended like a sentimental, well intentioned but simplistic allegory. But the style is powerful, very dense, each word giving or trying to give a new revealing detail.

It would have been better if Coetzee had put names to the situation and had avoided to set it in a reference Empire.

I think it's a lesson how to win a Nobel prize, it has all the ingredients, and the fact Coetzee won it before Vargas Llosa, and so many great writers are still waiting it's another proof Nobel prize has very little to do with literary quality. But I know this commentary can be unfair as this is my first novel by the author.

I'll try another one perhaps in the future, after all this is a good novel by any standard, but not a great one.


I wouldn't say unfair but premature. It is hard to determine if a writer deserves the Nobel by only one novel. Waiting for the Barbarian is a good novel but not the best he has. I recommed you to read Disgrace or Life and Times of Michael K. Those titles are for me the pinnacle of his novelistic work.
Other option you have is disliking him because the guy doesn't smile, right Eric?

[Elie]

Just finished reading The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles. I was recommended it by a friend who studied it for a class so I was a bit wary, not sure what to expect, but I really enjoyed it. I found it very compelling reading and polished off the last two hundred pages in one go this evening.

Can anyone recommend any of his other works?

[JTolle]

Just finished reading The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles. I was recommended it by a friend who studied it for a class so I was a bit wary, not sure what to expect, but I really enjoyed it. I found it very compelling reading and polished off the last two hundred pages in one go this evening.

Can anyone recommend any of his other works?

The Magus. It's the only book by Fowles I've read and it's one of my favorite novels. As far as I know it's a bit longer than The French Lieutenant's Woman and a bit slower, but really a stunning, formidable novel well worth its pages. I'd recommend having a dictionary on hand unless you regularly use words like cyclamen, recrudescence, or algedonic.

[Stiffelio]

Tom McCarthy: Remainder ****0
A clever but conceited philosophical exploration about memory, identity, chance and the unexplained in human behaviour. Remainder is a very well written novel, very funny at times; it has brilliant passages but could have been a wee shorter. McCarthy is certainly a new talent worthy of being taken into account. I look forward to reading his most recent novel C.

[sirena]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/pt.gif Death with Interruptions - Jos? Saramago ***00

The beginning was quite interesting; people stop dying and all. However the story started to decay when violet envelopes came on the scene, until the ultimate crescendo of one just horrible, horrible ending.
I must say I'm quite disappointed. The worst Saramago's novel that I read so far.

[peter_d]

eg Naguib Mahfouz - Palace walk ****0

It could have reached five stars if the tone of the first half of the book would not have been so 'sweet': long descriptions of how much the members of the family love each other.

Other than that it's a great book. Well developed characters with who you can identify; interesting insights in Egyptian history of the first half of the 20th century. Looking forward to reading part 2 and 3 of this triology.

[beelzebubbles]

The Magus. It's the only book by Fowles I've read and it's one of my favorite novels. As far as I know it's a bit longer than The French Lieutenant's Woman and a bit slower, but really a stunning, formidable novel well worth its pages. I'd recommend having a dictionary on hand unless you regularly use words like cyclamen, recrudescence, or algedonic.

Oh I do every day! Pass me the recrudescent cyclamen. I can't resist it. It's so algedonic.

I recently finished On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan. I give it ***00. I found the fact that not very far into it you know what's going to happen to the young newlyweds annoying. It's far too pat. I did enjoy the part were our young hero learns that it is gauche to rough people up. Best part of the book I thought.

Today I read Silk by Alessandro Barrico. ****0

I started Cat and Mouse by Gunther Grass. I can tell it's gonna be something. Great prose style.

[JTolle]

Oh I do every day! Pass me the recrudescent cyclamen. I can't resist it. It's so algedonic.

I recently finished On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan. I give it ***00. I found the fact that not very far into it you know what's going to happen to the young newlyweds annoying. It's far too pat. I did enjoy the part were our young hero learns that it is gauche to rough people up. Best part of the book I thought.


Indeed, indeed! Cyclamen at tea-time is quite unequaled!

I liked On Chesil Beach a tad more than you it seems, I enjoyed its succinctness and patness, it had no more, no less (maybe less) than it needed, but had you read anything by McEwan before this? I've heard it's more disappointing after something like Saturday or Atonement.

[Daniel del Real]

A failed trip to Chilean Literature:

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/cl.gif Enrique Lihn, Porque Escrib? **000+ I'm not going to deny that the guy has some excellent poems, but creating an anthology of almost 400 pages is too much for him as it contains many poems not worthy.

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/cl.gif Hern?n Rivera Letelier, El Arte de la Resurrecci?n **000+ Just a few days I was defending the Premio de Novela Alfaguara, claiming it delivered better novels than the Planeta Prize. Well, this one completeley failed at what I expected and I can tell it's one of the worst Alfaguara prize novels.

[Mirabell]

rereads and 1st time reads both


Die Unvollendeten, Reinhard Jirgl

Beim H?uten der Zwiebel, G?nter Grass

Sunset Park, Paul Auster

The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester

[beelzebubbles]

Indeed, indeed! Cyclamen at tea-time is quite unequaled!

I liked On Chesil Beach a tad more than you it seems, I enjoyed its succinctness and patness, it had no more, no less (maybe less) than it needed, but had you read anything by McEwan before this? I've heard it's more disappointing after something like Saturday or Atonement.

On Chesil Beach is my first McEwan. I wasn't disappointed but I wasn't bowled over either. It was kind of meh. *shrugs shoulders* I know the patness was kind of the point. We are reading about an inevitable break up. But did it have to be so inevitable? A little room to hope might have done it a bit of good. Just a smidge. Oh well at least she didn't vomit. If it was Roth there would have been vomit. There is no coming back from that.

[Daniel del Real]

rereads and 1st time reads both

Sunset Park, Paul Auster



Your thoughts?

[Mirabell]

Your thoughts?


the worst book by Paul Auster I have ever read.

[Liam]

the worst book by Paul Auster I have ever read.
My dear fellow, I don't know why you even bother with these people... :). Why not read "an oldie but goodie," something along the lines of The Life of the Blessed Christina of Markyate, perhaps? Mmm-good. :p.


L.

[JTolle]

Siegfried--Harry Mulisch *****

If this isn't even considered his greatest novel, I am ready to be absolutely, literally floored by The Discovery of Heaven. Maybe my expectations are too high, but I honestly expected a mediocre novel out of Siegfried, really just started reading it in honor of Mulisch, and it was so well paced, so frightening, so nightmarishly intelligent, accessible, and short! only 180 pages! Mulisch=Master. I am devastated that he has died. Anyone know why he didn't publish for the last nine years of his life?

[Mirabell]

My dear fellow, I don't know why you even bother with these people... :). Why not read "an oldie but goodie," something along the lines of The Life of the Blessed Christina of Markyate, perhaps? Mmm-good. :p.


L.


this The Life of Christina of Markyate Oxford World's Classics: Amazon.de: Samuel Fanous, Henrietta Leyser, C. H. Talbot: Englische B?cher (http://www.amazon.de/Christina-Markyate-Oxford-Worlds-Classics/dp/0199556059/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1288750225&sr=8-3)

?

[Liam]

this?
Well, as far as I know, there was only one Christina of Markyate, :).

Anyway, looks swell, doesn't it?


L.

[Liam]

However, my other point was: Given your general lack of satisfaction with Auster, why do you insist on returning to this author, time and time again (sadomasochism aside, :p)?

L.

[Stiffelio]

I recently finished On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan. I give it ***00. I found the fact that not very far into it you know what's going to happen to the young newlyweds annoying. It's far too pat. I did enjoy the part were our young hero learns that it is gauche to rough people up. Best part of the book I thought.

I have mixed feelings about On Chesil Beach. As a period piece about inevitable conflicts between people with different social upbringings it is unsurpassed. I hated the ending, of course. McEwan was ruthless with his characters and, yes, inevitability is what it was all about. It's the best written awful ending to a novel I've ever read.

[Flower]

Just finished A portrait of the artist as a young man by James Joyce.

What a book! It must be the most beautiful prose I have read in a long time.

Joyce and M?ller are on the top of my list of best reads this year!

***** +

[Mirabell]

We3, Grant Morrison, Frank Quitely

[Mirabell]

The Comfort Women: Sexual Violence and Postcolonial Memory in Korea and Japan, C. Sarah Soh

Not I, but a friend wrote this short piece on the book: Die Begriffe Wianbu und Ch?ngsindae (Guest Post by Azatoth) shigekuni. (http://shigekuni.wordpress.com/2010/11/03/die-begriffe-wianbu-und-chongsindae-guest-post-by-azatoth/)
Not quite a review, though.

[sirena]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/rs.gif San o ljubavi i smrti (A Dream of Love and Death) - Filip David ****0

[waxwing]

The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead

[Daniel del Real]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/al.gif Ismail Kadare, The Palace of Dreams *****
A masterpiece. The best Kadare I've read so far and that is already telling much since he has an amazing set of works.

[Mirabell]

Ask the Dust, John Fante

[JTolle]

Ask the Dust, John Fante

How'd you like it?

[waxwing]

The Jokers by Albert Cossery ***00

Very funny novel, like a Seinfeld episode it's dripping with irony, but the misogyny struck a sour note.

[learna]

The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa.

Historical events (I cannot tell about them as a simple background) used by Vargas Llosa are impressive themselves, a storyline is built well to safe an intrigue, the interesting plexus of the past and present. But awful historical moments sometimes cover the work as a fiction and I cannot say that the style of the novel is polished.

*** +

I think to read The War of the End of the World or Conversation in the Cathedral (I have not decided which of them).

[Manuel76]

Orlando Furioso- Ariosto *****++

One of the best books I’ve read in a long time. 1400 pages of wonderful poetry and unforgettable stories. The ultimate Renaissance poem, I recommend it to everybody interested in classical literature.
As it's so long, I read at the same time some other books, mostly poetry but some short novels too.

Bartleby y compañía- Enrique Vila-Matas ****

Interesting book by Vila-Matas. It’s not a novel but a little book about writers who suddenly decided not to write any more. Some stories are rather intriguing, others comic. The book has a good sense of humour and it’s for the most part very well written. Some of the writers he talks about are very known, others not so much (I wasn’t really sure if some of them were not directly invented).

But the subject is not worth so many pages, or at least Vila-Matas never developes it that much, so after a hundred pages you know it’s not going to surprise you anymore, and it doesn't.

The tale is told by a fictional character, and it works when you don’t think it’s Vila-Matas, but after a while the writer stops talking through his character and starts intermittently talking by himself, giving his opinions and, being sometimes so basic, you only can accept them as a parody (the hunchbacked character was a parody in himself but Vila-Matas shoudn’t be). An example is when he says about Maupassant:

En sus relatos se observa un extraordinario poder de observación, un magnífico trato de personajes y ambientes, así como un estilo- a pesar de la influenza de Flaubert- personalísimo.

In his stories there’s an extraordinary power of observation, a magnificent treatment of characters and atmosphere, and a very personal style- in spite of Flaubert’s influence

Well, it’s one of the worst moments in the book, and probably it would have been much better if he had just explained what his “very personal” style was about.

I prefered Nuria Amat Viajar es muy difícil (It's very difficult to travel), a similar book, but more imaginative.

And...hoy do you put the stars now???

[JTolle]

The Things They Carried--Tim O'Brien *****
The War of the Worlds--H.G. Wells ****0

[Polly Parrot]

E.M. Forster - A Passage to India
T.S. Eliot - The Waste Land; essays: Tradition and the Individual Talent; Ulysses, Order, and Myth

Forster is very accessible and easy to read, which is nice for a change. Despite having read it twice now, The Waste Land still confuses me though last week's seminar on it clarified it a little, another seminar will be devoted to it tomorrow, after which I hopefully grasp at least a little of its meaning and content.

[Daniel del Real]

[SIZE=3]

And...hoy do you put the stars now???

You reply and then Go Advanced.

[peter_d]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/al.gif Ismail Kadare, The Palace of Dreams *****
A masterpiece. The best Kadare I've read so far and that is already telling much since he has an amazing set of works.

I remember I couldn't get warm anymore for a whole night after I finished this book. Great indeed!

[Daniel del Real]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/mx.gif Alí Chumacero, Páramo de Sueños ****0+
The first of his only three poem books. Outstanding poet, a voice that speaks from the inner silence of our body and the distant solitude of our mind.

[Loki]

Much Ado About Nothing- William Shakespeare ****0+

I had already read it some years ago, but now I've really appreciate this great comedy. Sometimes it was really hilarious, especially when Beatrice and Benedick talk to each other at te beginning! :D


Does anybody know whether the expression "much ado about nothing" was already common in Shakespeare's time?

[Mirabell]

Astro City: Life in the Big City, Kurt Busiek, Brent Anderson, with covers by Alex Ross

fucking amazing. as was

Happy Days, Samuel Beckett


Ol' Sammy. Always fun to read.

[Stevie B]

Just finished Yi Munyol's Our Twisted Hero ****. The book has been called a Korean Lord of the Flies. Would like to read more from this author, but I don't think anything else has been translated into English. I was also disappointed to discover that the film version of this novel, which was well-received by critics, does not appear to be available on DVD in the U.S. Has anyone seen the film or read the book?

[Stiffelio]

César Aira: El Error ****0+

Aira's most recent literary romp is very good indeed. Always in control of this laberynthine, surrealistic plot, he makes the reader laugh and cuss at the same time at the way he constantly digresses into new, improbable territory. Random House Mondadory is publishing this novel so I hope it'll get translated soon.

[sirena]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/hr.gif Krstitelj (John the Baptist) - Miro Gavran **000

[Daniel del Real]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/lb.gif Amin Maalouf, Samarcande *****
Keep confirming what a great writer Maalouf is. His depiction of ancient wise man Omar Jayyám is almost perfect. The second part of the book is not as strong as the first one but is still able to give a good closure to the book.

[mesnalty]

A couple very impressive novels:

Billiards at Half-Past Nine, Heinrich Böll

The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, Ayi Kwei Armah

[Stevie B]

[QUOTE=mesnalty;76818]A couple very impressive novels:

Billiards at Half-Past Nine, Heinrich Böll

I remember liking Billiards, but not as much as The Clown. Have you read that Boll novel, Mesnalty?

[mesnalty]

I remember liking Billiards, but not as much as The Clown. Have you read that Boll novel, Mesnalty?

The only other one I've read is The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum, but I plan on checking out his other major novels at some point.

[Polly Parrot]

Virginia Woolf - To the Lighthouse
Guillaume de Lorris & Jean de Meun - Roman de la Rose (translation Frances Horgan)


Can't say I enjoyed either.

[sirena]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/dz.gif The Swallows of Kabul - Yasmina Khadra *****

One of my favourites contemporary writers.

[Mirabell]

In a Strange Room, Damon Galgut

[Loki]

Measure for Measure- William Shakespeare ***00
A good comedy (although for some critics this is one of the so-called problem plays), but it's not among his best, I think: Shakespeare is capable of much more than this.
There were of course good funny scenes, thanks to such characters as Claudio (called in the dramatis personae: a fantastic). However, due to the usual puns of Shakespeare's I wasn't able to grasp the whole meaning of the scenes with Elbow, Pompey and Mistress Overdone, as in my edition there weren't many notes: I should have to read the Oxford edition.
Having just read, Much Ado About Nothing, I can't but compare the two plays, although they have little in common. Between the two, Much Ado is the one I like better, because the tone is livelier, the whole comedy is funnier. Measure for Measure deals with a lot of more serious, and social, issues such as death, authority, the law etc; also, the long speeches of the Duke of Vienna make it more difficult to follow.

Now I'll start The Law Against Lovers, by W. Davenant (or D'avenant), which is the first adaptation, during the Restoration period, of a play by Shakespeare. It will be interesting I think, since Davenant mix these two comedies into one play. Most probably the style will be much inferior to Shakespeare's, but I hope I'll like it since I'm going to write my degree thesis about this play by Davenant.

[Caodang]

I’ve just finished reading Imre Kertesz's Fatelessness and I’m not so much moved by its “Holocaust” theme as I am appealed by a far more universal issue it tackles, no matter whether the author intended it or not. It can be expressed thus: The only way to survive Hell (especially a Hell constructed by your fellow human beings) is to get used to it and not to/cease to feel it as such, and this task is not impossible and not so undeserving as it may seem at first.

[learna]

About Tarkovsky - memoirs.

I did not know before reading this book that in 1967 in West the film - Andrei Rublev had been shown with the cut end. And when the film came in full in some time the Voice of America said that Tarkovsky had been forced to add a new end. When Tarkovsky was asked by Yury Nazarov about that he answered:" Are you crazy ( have you lost your mind)?! Never there has been such thing in a lifetime."

And one more interesting fact. When Solonitsyn tried out for the part of Andrei Rublev he played in a theatrical way and a lot of people tried to convince Tarkovsky to chose another actor but Tarkovsky decided to give a try. He showed some photos to the specialists on Old Russian Art and asked them:"Which of them is Andrei Rublev?" And they pointed at Anatoly Solonitsyn

[Daniel del Real]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/es.gif Miguel Delibes, La Sombra del Ciprés es Alargada (The Cypress Casts a Long Shadow) ***00+
Three and a half stars for this early and gloomy first novel of this great author. Very different to the rest of his works I've read, intimal and young with the constant presence of death angst in every page.

[Loki]

The Law Against the Lovers- William Davenant

I will have surely to re-read it in order to judge it.
This adaptations of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure and Much Ado About Nothing has really interested me. At the beginning Davenant doesn't change much, the scenes are more or less the same (by the way, there are not scenes as in modern editions of shakespearean texts, but just acts), but reading on we realise that Davenant really changes the play: maybe for political reasons, for ethical reasons, or maybe even for literary reasons.
The plot is based mostly on Measure for Measure: in this plot he inserts Benedick and Beatrice and their "witty war". I think the plot is complicated by Davenant, making it even better than the original perhaps: there's more action, there are more tricks (although the obscene "bed trick" is omitted) and I would say also much ado about nothing. Unfortunately Davenant has partly ruined the play at the end: he has been too hasty in resolving all the various situtations.

Two interesting additions to Shakespeare are:
-Viola, a character drawn from The Twelfth Night, who here is Beatrice's sister: she's a little girl who does nothing but sing and dance; the diarist Samuel Pypes seem to have liked the play just because of this girl!
-the metalinguistic aspect: towards the end the characters seem to think that they are in a play; in Act V they say:
Beat: No, sir, plays that end so begin to be
out of fashion.
Ben: Do you not see your cousin Juliet?
She has been advis'd by a bald dramatic poet
of the next cloister, to end her tragi-comedy
with Hymen the old way.

[sirena]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/hr.gif SMS eseji (SMS essays) - Viktor Žmegač **000

[Clarissa]

To the End of the Land - David Grossman transl. Jessica Cohen*****+++++



One of the most moving, most remarkable books I have ever read. A true masterpiece. Grossman is quite definitely a future Nobel Lit. Prize contender. Beautifully translated, even if I cannot judge the true feat that Jessica Cohen has accomplished as I cannot read the original Hebrew. I don't cry easily but I was often in tears while reading this book. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/26/books/review/Toibin-t.html?ref=books

[Peeping Tom]

Villian by Shuichi Yoshida, translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel. It’s a crime novel, but it’s much more than a whodunit. I really liked it.

[Stiffelio]

Niccolò Ammaniti: Io Non Ho Paura (I'm Not Scared) ***00+

A well written, if a trifle too plainy, loss of innocence-cum-suspense story set in Italy's rural south during the scorching summer of 1978 at the peak of the 'years of lead'. A 9 year-old boy discovers a heinous crime in which most of the adults in the small community, including his own father, are involved. The story is deftly told in first person from the point of view of the boy, who painfully comes to terms with the shifting morality surrounding him. The novel is well paced and the ending is a (not quite satisfying) cliff-hanger.

[JTolle]

Loving Sabotage--Amelie Nothomb trans. Andrew Wilson ****0+

I was hovering between ****0+ and ***** because I was very infatuated with this book, but settled for what I did because, in the end, I'm much more drawn to the baroque, the lengthy, and the complex, and so even though I found this book immensely pleasurable I know it's not going to stick like other novels have. But nonetheless a rich work, more profound than its simple prose might suggest. I look forward to reading more of her work.

[Rumpelstilzchen]

Let's see, here are the books I finished in the last 3 months (including subjective rating):

***** 2666, Roberto Bolano
****0 Suddenly in the Depth of the Forest, Amos Oz
***00 Those Who Love, Hate, Silvina Ocampo and Adolfo Bioy Casares
****0 Pnin, Vladimir Nabokov
***00 The Sunset Limited, Cormac McCarthy
*0000+ The Wrong Place, Brecht Evens
***00 In Praise of the Stepmother, Mario Vargas Llosa
**000 The Bad Girl, Mario Vargas Llosa
***** Man in the Holocene, Max Frisch
****0+ Stiller, Max Frisch
****0 Telephone Calls, Roberto Bolano
****0 Una Novelita Lumpen, Roberto Bolano

[Manuel76]

Madame Edwarda/Le mort/Histoire de l'oeil- Georges Bataille **000+

Disgusting little stories from a supposed French genius. It’s amazing how French critics succeed in exalt mediocre pedant writers, as long as they’re controversial and cerebral.

The three stories are cold pornography. The first two are written in a very detailed and formal style, are short (the best thing about them) and mix sex and death in a completely stupid way. Anyway they are not entirely devoid of interest.

Madame Edwarda’s preface is an example of a writer trying to explain that even if what follows seems a stupid laughable nonsense (which it indeed really seems to be), we’re going to read a very serious and brainy work of art disguised as pornography. The rest of the preface is a nonsensical theory about laugh, sex and death. The story itself is about a whore who says she is God. It has an interesting moment under the Porte Saint-Denis and very litle else.

The second story has an interesting structure. About thirty short chapters, all of them shorter than one page, with a title at the bottom of the page summarizing the content. Marie, after her lover is dead, gets out of her home and go to a pub. This are some of the most juicy titles:

Marie takes out the drunkard’s cock
Marie dances with Pierrot
Marie is sucked by Pierrot
Marie is fucked by Pierrot
Marie meets a dwarf
Marie pisses on the count
Marie sprinkles herself with urine
Marie vomits
Marie have a shit on the vomit…

And so on.

The third one is about a boy and a girl obsessed with criminal and disgusting sex practices. I just found it boring. From their very beginning there’s no limit to the degeneracy of the youngsters. You realize that if the first two stories had any interest it was just because they were short, because their structure were original and because of the notorious subjects.

Perhaps there’s a whole philosophy in the book, I only got to understand that all the characters and the writer really had a problem.

[Daniel del Real]

Loving Sabotage--Amelie Nothomb trans. Andrew Wilson ****0+

I was hovering between ****0+ and ***** because I was very infatuated with this book, but settled for what I did because, in the end, I'm much more drawn to the baroque, the lengthy, and the complex, and so even though I found this book immensely pleasurable I know it's not going to stick like other novels have. But nonetheless a rich work, more profound than its simple prose might suggest. I look forward to reading more of her work.

Apparently I'm not reading the same Amelie that Lionel and you are reading. Fascinating, pleasurable, rich, profound are not exactly the same adjectives I used to describe what I read from her, The Book of Proper Names: Adjectives from this book vary from cheesy, coarse, soap-operish, simple, vain,etc. You're just forcing me to go back reading her and confirm that, and I don't know if I'll have enough guts to do it, maybe not prepared yet.


Let's see, here are the books I finished in the last 3 months (including subjective rating):

***** 2666, Roberto Bolano
****0 Suddenly in the Depth of the Forest, Amos Oz
**000 The Bad Girl, Mario Vargas Llosa
****0 Telephone Calls, Roberto Bolano
****0 Una Novelita Lumpen, Roberto Bolano

I'm glad you liked 2666 (What's not to like in this amazing novel) and that you kept reading him. His short stories are also very impressive and many critics don't place them in the position they deserve because they are inevitably shadowed by the thick novels The Savage Detectives and of course 2666. In many of their short stories inhabits the gestation of 2666, but it is more present in this particular volume you read, Telephone Calls. Prefiguración de Lalo Cura is a clear example. Speaking about his novellas, I think Una Novelita Lumpen is the weakest I've read, apart from Amberes which is more a divertimento, an hybrid exercise between a novel, a long prose poem and a digression. An embryonic type of work that cannot be considered fully as a novella. From this type of narrative I'll place at the top three excellent novellas like Estrella Distante, La Pista de Hielo and Nocturno de Chile. If you haven't tried any of those I truly recommend them.

The Oz book is great since it works from many different angles and positions. It works like a fable, it sounds at times like a children story, but at the same time has its depth for those who want to read it more carefully and give it a meaning. It flows so simple and beautifully that it completes a great achievement, those kind of texts that can bring a lot to any kind of reader. Quite good.

Finally I have to thank you for watching the first bad review in the forum of The Bad Girl. Don't know why so many people liked a novel that poor.

[JTolle]

Apparently I'm not reading the same Amelie that Lionel and you are reading. Fascinating, pleasurable, rich, profound are not exactly the same adjectives I used to describe what I read from her, The Book of Proper Names: Adjectives from this book vary from cheesy, coarse, soap-operish, simple, vain,etc. You're just forcing me to go back reading her and confirm that, and I don't know if I'll have enough guts to do it, maybe not prepared yet.

I have to admit I was extremely hesitant about using the word "profound", I just figured it was the better than saying "deep" or "interesting", what I really mean is that she drew forth a lot of meaning from the events she described, and everything she said was astute, witty, and at times stunningly simple as the most revelatory logic is (like her bit on mythification and Chinese grammar).



The Oz book is great since it works from many different angles and positions. It works like a fable, it sounds at times like a children story, but at the same time has its depth for those who want to read it more carefully and give it a meaning. It flows so simple and beautifully that it completes a great achievement, those kind of texts that can bring a lot to any kind of reader. Quite good.

It's funny that that's how you describe Oz's book because that's basically how I felt with Loving Sabotage. It's written from the perspective of a child and it can be interpreted as a simple love story, but a love story bared to the bone, all its complexities and pains told with the directness of a child, and thus it becomes every love story in a way. But there's even more than just that, like I said very "rich" but very simple, I think "rich" and "simple" are the perfect words for it.

[e joseph]

Here's some stuff I've read since last I posted (July?). Reading's been dulled to about one book a month lately, but I like to read at least one page per day still to keep recognition of letters intact. Anyway:

Cat and Mouse - Gunter Grass (great)
Soul of Wood - Jakov Lind (great)
The Good Soldier - Ford Maddox Ford (great)
Seize the Day - Saul Bellow (great)
Home Land - Sam Lipsyte (good)
The Witches - Roald Dahl (good)
Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates - Tom Robbins(good)
Foucault's Pendulum - Umberto Eco (good)
The Anthropologist - Nicholson Baker (good)
Super Sad True Love Story - Gary Shteyngart (meh)
Tom McCarthy - C (meh)
Venus Drive - Sam Lipsyte

Apply star values at your leisure. Ditto question asking. Oh yeah, read some poetry too. Some John Ashbery, Elizabeth Bishop, Walt Whitman, more I can't remember. When I say some, think small quantities.

[Daniel del Real]

Here's some stuff I've read since last I posted (July?). Reading's been dulled to about one book a month lately, but I like to read at least one page per day still to keep recognition of letters intact. Anyway:

Cat and Mouse - Gunter Grass (great)
Soul of Wood - Jakov Lind (great)
The Good Soldier - Ford Maddox Ford (great)
Seize the Day - Saul Bellow (great)
Home Land - Sam Lipsyte (good)
The Witches - Roald Dahl (good)
Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates - Tom Robbins(good)
Foucault's Pendulum - Umberto Eco (good)
The Anthropologist - Nicholson Baker (good)
Super Sad True Love Story - Gary Shteyngart (meh)
Tom McCarthy - C (meh)
Venus Drive - Sam Lipsyte

Apply star values at your leisure. Ditto question asking. Oh yeah, read some poetry too. Some John Ashbery, Elizabeth Bishop, Walt Whitman, more I can't remember. When I say some, think small quantities.

Good to see you back buddy. Don't disappear for such a long time again.

[Mirabell]

Here's some stuff I've read since last I posted (July?). Reading's been dulled to about one book a month lately, but I like to read at least one page per day still to keep recognition of letters intact. Anyway:

Cat and Mouse - Gunter Grass (great)
Soul of Wood - Jakov Lind (great)
The Good Soldier - Ford Maddox Ford (great)
Seize the Day - Saul Bellow (great)
Home Land - Sam Lipsyte (good)
The Witches - Roald Dahl (good)
Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates - Tom Robbins(good)
Foucault's Pendulum - Umberto Eco (good)
The Anthropologist - Nicholson Baker (good)
Super Sad True Love Story - Gary Shteyngart (meh)
Tom McCarthy - C (meh)
Venus Drive - Sam Lipsyte

Apply star values at your leisure. Ditto question asking. Oh yeah, read some poetry too. Some John Ashbery, Elizabeth Bishop, Walt Whitman, more I can't remember. When I say some, think small quantities.

that is pretty awesome! bishop? how much/what? have you read the bishop/lowell letters ("words in air")? if not, HIGHLY recommended.
I am troubled about the low ranking of steyngart which I own and wanted to read sometime soon but which has suddenly wandered off my desk onto the shelf to await reconsideration in a few weeks...
ford madox ford rocks. speaking of short books, I recently read the new novel by Damien Galgut which still sends shivers down (up?) my spine, so maybe read that one? and seize the day, yeah. we have a thread on that, I think? I've been rtempted to read (Sammler's Planet) or reread (Augie March) Bellow this week, but what with all the fatsos clogging my reading pipeline, that's not going to happen too soon

[e joseph]

Thanks Daniel. I'm likely to disappear frequently with my of late reading pace. Don't miss me too much.

Mirabell-
Bishop, not much. I'm kinda new to poetry appreciation, but some of her stuff hits pretty hard. Slowly (maybe 20 poems?) working my way through her Complete Poems (I know, you're no fan vs. the LOA collection). The Bishop/Lowell letters may come WAY later, after I develop some appreciation for each separately through their work. Thanks in advance though, your recommendations are always appreciated and cataloged in my brain.

I was troubled by reading Shteyngart. I had high hopes for that one. He's a hell of a writer though, so maybe I'm off base. Maybe.

Bellow. I've read only Seize the Day, Herzog and Henderson the Rain King. He's on a list of writers I'm slowly making my way through. Augie March is next up, eventually.

And I saw your enthusiastic review of the Galgut book. OK, well, I saw that you HAVE an enthusiastic review of the Galgut book. Between that and knowing it's short, I'll get round to it shortly. Maybe it'll even be my one book for December.

[Mirabell]

Ah, no, make that Vargas Llosa's somewhat randomly titled "The Time of the Hero". Your december read, I mean. This is one hell of a book. At first it's a bit spry, but incredibly complex and it gets better with every page.

Or, better still, read Robert Walser's "The Robber". I've reread it twice last week and it still stuns me. Might be walser's best novel, and that's saying a lot for a writer who hasn't published a mediocre book ever (and that includes books published after he died). One of the most perfecterestest writers in German in, like, ever. Can't vouch for the translation, of course, but, christ in a can! everytime I pick walser up I need to read him aloud to random strangers or desperate pigeons.
http://www.amazon.com/Robber-Robert-Walser/dp/0803298099

[Bjorn]

I've sucked at posting lately, sorry. I did find some time for reading, though:

The Good Man Jesus And The Scoundrel Christ, Philip Pullman (UK) **000
Yet another fairly weak entry in Canongate's Myth series, which is looking increasingly like a failure despite some good books. Pullman essentially copies the Yeshua part of The Master And Margarita, except without the resonance and literary ability of Bulgakov. Dull.

Santa Olivia, Jaqueline Carey (USA) ***00
Very enjoyable near-future dystopia with fantasy overtones that never get to take over - think what might have happened if James Cameron's old turkey Dark Angel had actually been done well. Almost ****0.

Corrected Edition, Peter Esterhazy (Hungary) ****0
Is it wrong to think that this much shorter, much more personal take on Celestial Harmonies is actually better than its huge, sprawling forebear?

The Black Dahlia, James Ellroy (USA) *****
Woah. I've never read Ellroy before. I finished this in two days and then had to take a deep breath and restrain myself to not immediately break into the bookshop and get the next book in the LA Quartet. It's that good.

En liten bok om ondska (A Little Book About Evil), Ann Heberlein (Sweden) ****0
The term "evil" has been making a comeback lately, not just in fiction but in the news. Heberlein, a doctor of theology, spends 250 pages discussing the various meanings of the word and the alleged dangers of applying it sloppily, taking examples both from real-life atrocities and fictional villains. Interesting.

[Rumpelstilzchen]

I'm glad you liked 2666 (What's not to like in this amazing novel) and that you kept reading him. His short stories are also very impressive and many critics don't place them in the position they deserve because they are inevitably shadowed by the thick novels The Savage Detectives and of course 2666. [...] I think Una Novelita Lumpen is the weakest I've read, apart from Amberes [...] From this type of narrative I'll place at the top three excellent novellas like Estrella Distante, La Pista de Hielo and Nocturno de Chile. If you haven't tried any of those I truly recommend them.


Yeah, do not take my ratings too seriously, these can easily fluctuate one star up or down in the future (the 5 star ratings I am quite sure about though)... I read these books in the other direction, meaning that the first book on my list was the last one I read, i.e. 2666. I started on purpose with some shorter works of Bolano to get some feeling before taking the long dark journey through 2666, which was a hell of trip I can assure you. I agree with you that some of the short stories are very strong, but I found not all of them as great (probably unavoidable in a collection of stories) therefore not the highest possible rating. Though 4 stars is also excellent on my rating scale. Thanks for the recommendations, I will check them out as soon as possible. Una Novelita Lumpen was just my first Bolano book, so let's see how it will stand against the other novellas.

my rating goes like this (sometimes an additonal + or -):
***** <-> "should be considered a classic"
****0 <-> "great literature"
***00 <-> "good literature, worthwhile reading, far from perfect though"
**000 <-> "some reservations, did not really like it myself, but could be more interesting for other tastes"
*0000 <-> "if you ask me, forget about it and make better use of your time"


The Oz book is great since it works from many different angles and positions. It works like a fable, it sounds at times like a children story, but at the same time has its depth for those who want to read it more carefully and give it a meaning. It flows so simple and beautifully that it completes a great achievement, those kind of texts that can bring a lot to any kind of reader. Quite good.

Yes, I fully agree with you here.

[e joseph]

Ah, no, make that Vargas Llosa's somewhat randomly titled "The Time of the Hero". Your december read, I mean. This is one hell of a book. At first it's a bit spry, but incredibly complex and it gets better with every page.

Or, better still, read Robert Walser's "The Robber". I've reread it twice last week and it still stuns me. Might be walser's best novel, and that's saying a lot for a writer who hasn't published a mediocre book ever (and that includes books published after he died). One of the most perfecterestest writers in German in, like, ever. Can't vouch for the translation, of course, but, christ in a can! everytime I pick walser up I need to read him aloud to random strangers or desperate pigeons.
http://www.amazon.com/Robber-Robert-Walser/dp/0803298099

And thanks for more recommendations. Of Vargas Llosa I've read The Feast of the Goat, which was good not great, so I've been slow to get back to him. Walser I've read most of The Tanners by and just couldn't really get into it. I feel like it's my failure as a reader. Maybe The Robber would be a better way to go?

[Mirabell]

it's worth a try, at least. or you could try his shorter prose. 90% of his work is short prose.

[sirena]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/hr.gif Kao da me nema (As If I Am Not There) - Slavenka Drakulić *****

[Daniel del Real]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/pt.gif José Saramago, All the Names (Re-read) *****+
A modern classic.

[lenz]

Senselessness -- Horacio Castellanos Moya, Translated by Katherine Silver
An intense, darkly humorous novella, an attempt to deal with knowledge of torture and killings in Central America.

On Chesil Beach -- Ian McEwan
Carefully written (in my opinion, his usual style) story of love lost. Ignorance of sexualityalong with repressive social norms make for a satirical and somewhat touching short novel.

A World of Love -- Elizabeth Bowen
In her odd way, Bowen leads us along a path that might lead to many possibilities and then ends with exactly the right one.

[e joseph]

Senselessness -- Horacio Castellanos Moya, Translated by Katherine Silver
An intense, darkly humorous novella, an attempt to deal with knowledge of torture and killings in Central America.

Yeah, I really liked this one as well. The narrator was perfect in that one. It's like 140 pages. I'm looking at you here Mirabell.

[Mirabell]

The Ruby in the Smoke, Philip Pullman

Quién es, Sébastien Doubinsky

The Mountain Lion, Jean Stafford

[miercuri]

Călătorie într-un picior (Traveling on One Leg) - Herta Mueller ****0
Finished this a while ago but didn't get round to posting about it. This is one of those little books that must be enjoyed slowly. A story about immigration and separation, quite striking in its own understated way. The style is loose, poetic, very tranquil. It manages to convey a strange sense of loss and aloofness which tells more about the protagonist's experience as an immigrant than the words themselves.
My only issue with it would be the translation. The use of some tenses, in particular, struck me as clumsy and awkwardly un-Romanian at many times. I'm not sure if the translator was trying to preserve a certain trait from the original, but it didn't read well at all. The publisher is a prestigious one and this edition is part of a fancy Herta Mueller collection which they've just launched, I have no idea how they managed to mess it up so badly. I'd like to read this again in English perhaps.

[Stiffelio]

Wells Tower: Everything Ravaged, Evereything Burned *****

This is the best short-story collection in English I've read in a long time. I was blown away by this young writer's command of the form. It's hard to believe this is only his first book. Each of the nine (fairly long) stories creates a world in itself, to the extent that they could very well develop into novels. All but one of the stories deal with angry males with an axe to grind against society or against themselves. Tower's prose is so elequent and so rich it's intoxicating: I found myself rereading whole paragraphs for sheer pleasure. This time the hype is justified. This is a stunning debut and I hope he can follow it up in the future at this same level.

[Bjorn]

Karl Ove Knausgård, Min kamp (My Struggle), vol 1 (Norway) ****0

Quite good, though I'm not sure it deserves the uproar it's caused in Scandinavian literary circles, at least not based on this volume. Taken on its own, without the real-world implications of it being a "tell-all" novel about real people who don't get to defend themselves, it's a very good novel about growing up - sure, the first half is the same tired old story of a teenage boy discovering tits and rock'n'roll, but the second half and his incredible eye for detail throughout more than makes up for it. 200 pages ago I was pretty sure I wouldn't bother with the following five volumes, now I'm really curious to at least dive into vol 2 when it shows up.

[JTolle]

The Names--Don DeLillo *****

[Manuel76]

Journal du voleur- Jean Genet *****+

Most impresive prose writings from French XX literature I’ve read alter Proust and Celine: amazingly lyrical, passionate, genuine and destructive.

For Genet burglary, treachery and homosexuality are the three interrelated pillars of his existence and the source of his sense of beauty whether in life or in his prose.

He tells about his friends, his lovers and especially about his tireless and honest searching of saintliness by the way of loneliness, baseness and rejection.

That my life must be legend, it means readable, and its reading must give birth to some new emotion that I call poetry. I’m nothing anymore, only a pretext.

With a life worth of Villon and the decision, pride and inflexibility of Rimbaud, he can write this lines (which could seem extracted from a letter by Rimbaud):

I believed that I perceived things with a vivid clarity. Having lost, even the most trivial ones, their usual meaning, I arrived to ask myself if it was true that we drank in a glass or put on shoes in our feet.

Of course this hallucinate mind was dangerous with a job like his. But Genet follows his road. The last part of the novel is more and more explicit in his decision to become a saint by his crimes and suffering.

[JTolle]

Journal du voleur- Jean Genet *****+


Goytisolo wrote a very informative essay on Genet that you can read in his book Cinema Eden largely about Genet's importance as a poet, but analyzing him through a very personal lens, speaking about the betrayals and treacheries Genet committed against his friends, many times, it seems. He compares Genet to a Malayawi, a saint of the Muslim/Semitic culture who disguised his saintliness in sin. One famous story tells of a fledgling Malayawi whose master tells him to go to the public marketplace and buy a cask of wine at midday to crush his vanity. I think, from what I read of Genet, and what you said, a very apt comparison.

[waxwing]

Excellent Women by Barbara Pym ****0

Elegy For April by Benjamin Black **000

Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford ****0

[Manuel76]

Goytisolo wrote a very informative essay on Genet that you can read in his book Cinema Eden largely about Genet's importance as a poet, but analyzing him through a very personal lens, speaking about the betrayals and treacheries Genet committed against his friends, many times, it seems. He compares Genet to a Malayawi, a saint of the Muslim/Semitic culture who disguised his saintliness in sin. One famous story tells of a fledgling Malayawi whose master tells him to go to the public marketplace and buy a cask of wine at midday to crush his vanity. I think, from what I read of Genet, and what you said, a very apt comparison.

Thanks JTolle, I'll try to find it, as I love Goytisolo and Genet's work. I'm completely astonished with this book. I had read his theatre (and I think he's among the very best playwriters in the XX century, the only French one I find really interesting) but had never read any novel by him. I really recomend it.

[Jayaprakash]

The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington, which I liked a great deal. My review's here (http://aaahfooey.blogspot.com/2010/11/hearing-trumpet-leonora-carrington.html). Also a great deal of genre stuff - Michael Moorcock's Dancers At The End Of Time trilogy, which was brilliant and very original, his Swords Trilogy which is closer to by-the-numbers epic fantasy but still had some excellent moments and the first Fu Manchu novel by Sax Rohmer, which I thought was very gripping and eerie.

[beelzebubbles]

Cat and Mouse, Gunter Grass 4 stars
A Far Cry from Kensington, Muriel Spark 4 stars
Loitering with Intent, Muriel Spark 4 stars

The people who recommended Muriel Spark were right she is addictive.

Senselessness is a book whose title I was just e-mailing e-joseph about coincidentally enough.

[e joseph]

Cat and Mouse, Gunter Grass 4 stars
A Far Cry from Kensington, Muriel Spark 4 stars
Loitering with Intent, Muriel Spark 4 stars

The people who recommended Muriel Spark were right she is addictive.

Senselessness is a book whose title I was just e-mailing e-joseph about coincidentally enough.
Senselessness is a book I just emailed you back about coincidentally. Seems totally unnecessary now.

Cat and Mouse was a good one, wasn't it? Read it a month or two ago and enjoyed.

[sirena]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/us.gif The Twentieth Wife - Indu Sundaresan ***00

[Daniel del Real]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/cl.gif Poli Délano, Y tú no me Respondes ***00

[Mirabell]

How'd you like it?

a lot. see also in the thread http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/showthread.php/36987-John-Fante-Ask-the-Dust

need to read more fante.

[Stevie B]

need to read more fante.


If you haven't read it yet, Wait Until Spring, Bandini is worth a try. It's my favorite Fante novel (though I've only read two others).

[e joseph]

Billy Budd, Sailor - Herman Melville
Enjoyed it, need to reread it to grasp everything Melville was going for. Only the second of his works I've read. Getting to more soon. Then more after that.

Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror - John Ashbery
Not really "finished" with it as much as due back to the library. Read all the poems at least once though. Not a damn clue what I was reading most of the time, but I liked it. Looking forward to reading and being confused by more of his stuff, as well as by these poems again.

[Mirabell]

For once, I do not recommend reading the LoA edition: take an inebriated look at the two volumes of selected Ashbery. the first is just called Selected poems (and has a butt-ugly cover), the second is called Notes From The Air: Selected Later Poems. Great, great stuff.

while we're at it: take a look (if you haven't yet) at the work of Frank Bidart. What a poet.

[Clarissa]

Wittgensteins Neffe - On the one hand, a virulent diatribe against Austria/Vienna and the leading theatre in Vienna, the Burgtheater, more specifically the production of his play Die Jagdgesellschaft, of which he was convinced that the theatre and the actors sabotaged it on purpose and caused it to flop, on the other, the story of his strange friendship with Paul Wittgenstein, the philosopher's nephew, which was more hate/love (not in the sexual sense!) than normal friendship. He draws an extraordinary portrait of Paul Wittgenstein and, in so doing, an equally extraordinary self-portrait and the problem he had of facing his own mortality.
It is exceptionally well written and even sentences that take up more than a page, of which there are many, are .easy to follow and understand. Yes, he was a brilliant writer and, yes, he was a strange man.
In his Will, he specified that none of his plays should ever be produced in Austria after his death, so great was his hatred of the country. This 'last wish' has not been respected.
A short book, quickly read. In fact, I only bought it because David Grossman quotes from it in his To the End of the Land, which is quite the most outstanding book I have read in a long, long time.

[Stiffelio]

Yasunari Kawabata: Thousand Cranes ***00

Somewhat disappointed with this short, understated piece of writing. Maybe it's me but I don't seem to connect with Mr Kawabata's world.

[Daniel del Real]

Yasunari Kawabata: Thousand Cranes ***00

Somewhat disappointed with this short, understated piece of writing. Maybe it's me but I don't seem to connect with Mr Kawabata's world.

Agree, one of his less achieved works I've raead. However it has many beautiful moments, for example the beatifully detailed ceremony of the tea.

[sirena]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/ba.gif Volga, Volga - Miljenko Jergović ****0

[Bjorn]

Stephen King - Full Dark, No Stars (USA) ***00

King continues his latter-day streak of adequacy.

Thomas Mann - Der Tod In Venedig (Germany) *****

Have to say that neither Der Zauberberg or Buddenbrooks ever quite bowled me over, but this short little novel has all the urgency and heart the other two obscured with well-written reasoning.

[Clarissa]

Fredom - Jonathan Franzen

Oh for the old time editor! He really did overegg the pudding, so many sentences repeated in different words, so many supefluous adjectives and adverbs, and so many uncalled for split infinitives. The dysfunctional American family - I could not feel for them, there are other problems in this world and this navelgazing irritated me.

[JTolle]

A fascinating book and one of the most educational endeavors I've taken on in a while, too bad there weren't that many great poets:

The Anthology of Modern Korean Poetry (1986) edited by Chung Chong-wha ***00

(Edward W. Poitras is the best translator in the book)

[Daniel del Real]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/tr.gif Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence ***00
A book that could've been 400 pages shorter with the same or better effect. Still poor for Pamuk's standards, not worse than The New Life though.

[Manuel76]

La casa verde (The green house)- Mario Vargas Llosa *****+

Wonderful first real masterpiece by Vargas Llosa. Almost at the same level with Conversación en la Catedral, among the best XX novels.

[Daniel del Real]

La casa verde (The green house)- Mario Vargas Llosa *****+

Wonderful first real masterpiece by Vargas Llosa. Almost at the same level with Conversación en la Catedral, among the best XX novels.

I need to reread this novel. The problem is that I started reading Vargas Llosa with some of his latest novels that are more linear regarding narrative voices and temporality. The first one I read from his earlier novels was La Casa Verde, and it was really hard for me that make that transitions between this two different narrative styles he uses. I finished it, liked it, but got lost in many parts and that was I wasn't able to enjoy it as much as I should. I'll give it a try next year.
You still think Conversación en la Catedral is better? how about compared to La Guerra del Fin del Mundo?

[Manuel76]

Daniel, I read both and definitely Conversación en la Catedral is much better. Go for this one.

[Manuel76]

Tropismes- Nathalie Sarraute ****0

24 short frames written in a very repetitive, crystal clear prose style, only using third person and with a very simple ans straightforward vocabulary. As an stylistic experiment it's interesting and good enough, but not much far reaching. As a novel I don't think it can be called that. I don't think it will linger in my memory.

It's a repetitive he/she/they narrative about people reacting (scared) to something or somebody around them. As a point of view it's very limited and narrow. This early nouveau roman has very little to say but tries to make amends for it by looking for supposedly new ways to say it.

[Polly Parrot]

William Faulkner - The Sound and the Fury

I liked it but the first part was difficult to get through, but it makes sense now. :-)

[Bjorn]

Naïri Nahapétian, Who Killed Ayatollah Kanuni? (Iran) **000-

Exiled Iranian journalist wants to write a more nuanced picture of Iranian politics, the various factions of opposition, and how a madman like Ahmadenijad could get elected. That's good. To do so, she writes a really crap murder mystery. That's bad.

[Eric]

Tell us more, Björn. Why specifically is it such a crap book? Is Marianne Tufvesson's translation to blame, and have you seen the original to compare? Was it originally written in French or Farsi? Has it been translated into English? Why did this small publishing house bother to translate this first novel into Swedish if it's such crap? What other things have Sekwa published? What have Johanna Daehli and Helén Enqvist published before? Is Sekwa jumping on the crime novel bandwagon to pay its bills? Lots of questions, Björn.

http://sekwa.typepad.com/sekwa/nairi-nahapetian.html

[sirena]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/jp.gif Asleep - Banana Yoshimoto ****0

[e joseph]

For once, I do not recommend reading the LoA edition: take an inebriated look at the two volumes of selected Ashbery. the first is just called Selected poems (and has a butt-ugly cover), the second is called Notes From The Air: Selected Later Poems. Great, great stuff.

while we're at it: take a look (if you haven't yet) at the work of Frank Bidart. What a poet.
Thanks for this. Just picked up a copy of Notes From The Air today. Thanks remainders for the 80% off price tag. I'll slowly pick away at it, inebriated and sober. We'll see how goes.

Thanks for the Frank Bidart recommendation too.

[JTolle]

Thanks for this. Just picked up a copy of Notes From The Air today. Thanks remainders for the 80% off price tag. I'll slowly pick away at it, inebriated and sober. We'll see how goes.

That book was my introduction to Ashbery, it is definitely a great collection of his verse, though The Moorings of Starting Out is probably my favorite of his collected verse that I own. After I get the LoA Ashbery, things will surely change.

Soul Mountain--Gao Xingjian trans. Mabel Lee ****0

I have the frustrating suspicion that Lee's translation is what kept this from being a masterpiece (in English).

[sirena]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/eg.gif Chicago - Alaa al-Aswany ****0

[lenz]

To Siberia - Per Petterson - trans. Anne Born

Very lovely and too short. I think he's becoming a favourite of mine.

[Flower]

To Siberia - Per Petterson - trans. Anne Born

Very lovely and too short. I think he's becoming a favourite of mine.

Oh I am glad to hear someone besides me enjoy Per Petterson on this site! Which of his book have you read?

[JTolle]

The Sound of My Waves: Selected Poems of Ko Un ***00
The Boy Changed Into a Stag: Selected Poems 1949-1967--Ferenc Juhasz *****

[Flower]

John Wray "Lowboy"

Fantastic book! I found myself postponing to read further yet wanting to know what happens as I didn't want to book to end. I was absolutely captured by John Wray's marvelous intense storytelling.

READ THIS BOOK!

****0+

[Bjorn]

Georges Perec - W Or The Memory Of Childhood (France) *****

Despite an odd shift midway through, one of the best Perecs I've read - the ending is a gutpunch, but one that really works.

[lenz]

Oh I am glad to hear someone besides me enjoy Per Petterson on this site! Which of his book have you read?

This is embarrassing. I haven't read anything else of his. I was confusing him with Gerbrandt Bakker, whose The Twin was read by our book club a few months ago. Anyway I like them both and will read more of each. I think Petterson could be a bit less minimalist without dulling the impact of To Siberia. The protagonist's personality undergoes changes at a breathless rate. I would like to have spent more time reading about how that happened.

[Daniel del Real]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/pt.gif Saramago and his readers, Text selection by writers ****0
http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/pe.gif Ivan Thays, Un Lugar Llamado Oreja de Perro ***00

[Flower]

This is embarrassing. I haven't read anything else of his. I was confusing him with Gerbrandt Bakker, whose The Twin was read by our book club a few months ago. Anyway I like them both and will read more of each. I think Petterson could be a bit less minimalist without dulling the impact of To Siberia. The protagonist's personality undergoes changes at a breathless rate. I would like to have spent more time reading about how that happened.

Maybe you should try "Out stealing horses"?

See old review from New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/24/books/review/McGuane.html

[Bjorn]

Alain Mabanckou, Memoirs of a Porcupine (Congo-Brazzaville), ****0

An improvement on the last Mabanckou I read, African Psycho. Not a great novel IMO, but very enjoyable satire.

[hdw]

I've never understood why the fact that you've just finished reading a book merits a special thread with that title - after all, you presumably wouldn't post a review of a book you vaguely remembered from twenty years ago?? - and if you've just finished it, why not review it under Writers or European Literature or Salman Rushdie or Australian Aboriginal Dream-Time Chants or wherever it belongs? Having said all of which, I've just finished reading a book, and I might as well mention it here as anywhere else. I don't think even its author would class it as English Literature, but in his afterword he name-checks Orwell's 1984, and it has something of the same tone of outrage at where we have allowed our politicians to lead us.

Henry Porter is well-known as a journalist (Guardian, Observer, Daily Telegraph) with a special interest in charting and commenting on the inexorable rise and rise of the power of the state over the individual. In his novel The Dying Light, there is a certain thematic link to the Julian Assange/Wikileaks thread. Our hero, a former head of the Joint Intelligence Committee, becomes alarmed at the implications of a top-secret government-sponsored IT scheme called DEEP TRUTH which aims to take surveillance of the UK's citizens to new heights. The beauty of it is, according to charismatic, messianic PM John Temple (not a million miles removed from Tony Blair) that even if the great apathetic couch-potato British public knew about it, they would just reach for the remote to change the channel and crack open another can.

"This is twenty-first century government: we need such systems to run the country, to help people help themselves. Surveillance is part of all our lives. The gathering, processing and sharing of personal data are now an essential element in the armoury of social policy. You don't hear people complaining about it because they know it's necessary and want us to look after them, without having to bother about all the details."

Given the recent trend for delightful young KGB interns to infiltrate our Western corridors of power, the following comment of Porter's is thought-provoking:

"Recently a Russian journalist named Irada Zeinalova described living in Britain for her audience at home thus: 'Your moves are monitored by your bus tickets. There are CCTV cameras on every building and computer chips on the rubbish bin - and they can tell a lot about your life by studying your rubbish ... Security has got absurd.' This is precisely the kind of dispatch routinely sent home by western correspondents in the Soviet Union during the Brezhnev era."

Before Eric starts fulminating about loony lefty sandal-wearing conspiracy-sniffing Trotskyists ... I think Porter is actually a bit of an old Tory, who approaches life liberty and the right to pursue individual happiness from a right-of-centre libertarian perspective.

Harry

[Eric]

I think this thread has its merits, because it keeps us abreast of what people are reading now. It's always interesting to see the reviews and, indeed, the reading trends.

For instance, as you will see on another thread, I have just finished reading a book called The Other City by the Czech author Michal Ajvaz. This novel is indeed a celebration of Prague, as I read elsewhere. Ajvaz' descriptions of Prague under a blanket of snow are very poetic and perceptive. The problem is that the novel gets nowhere. The protagonist discovers another world behind the façade of the real one, but as there appear to be no clear boundaries, you are never quite sure whether you're in this world, or the one beyond.

The novel soon becomes episodic, with no clear reason for the protagonist to enter or leave the other world. The episodes themselves become increasingly bizarre and unconnected with any discoveries or progress that the protagonist makes. The freakier the better, seems to be Ajvaz' yardstick. It becomes a kind of children's fantasy for adults.

So ultimately, I at least couldn't feel any emotional attachment to what had promised to be an atmosphere-laden novel. There is relatively little dialogue as such, as each time some second-hand bookseller or librarian speaks, he goes into two pages of lecturing about this second world beyond the palimpsest of our own, hinting at rather random aspects that are never tied together.

All in all, a disappointing book.

*

P.S. for Harry: there are no sweaty-sandalled Trots in the above novel. Worse than old Tories turning lefty are old Commies becoming Tory prigs. Britain has a few like Ron Liddle and Christopher Hitchens, who pontificate irritatingly in such mags as the Spectator.

There is a difference between CCTV cameras and labour camps is what I would tell Irada Zeinalova. I'd rather be spotted scratching my bum on the street rather than spend ten years chopping down trees. Quote from the Daily Mail article that Harry presumably read:


Mrs Zeinalova, 37, an award-winning correspondent in London for the Kremlin-controlled Moscow TV station Channel One, accepted that some Russian journalists in London face close monitoring by British counter-intelligence.
If she's Kremlin-controlled, she'll be controlled by more than CCTV cameras and British intelligence, but also by her own bosses back home. If she were to suggest that London was nicer than Moscow, she'd suddenly become a Chelyabinsk based sub-editor for a minor provincial Russian newspaper.

[Mirabell]

Two rereads because of the Levin novel

My Life as a man, Philip Roth

End Zone, Don Delillo

Delillo was better than I remembered, Roth wasn't as good.And this

Infinite Crisis, Geoff Johns, Phil Jimenez et al.which is crazy.

[hdw]

Quote from the Daily Mail article that Harry presumably read:


I've been insulted by experts in my time, and thought I had learnt to ride with the punches, but the accusation that I read the Daily Mail is the lowest blow yet.

Harry

[JTolle]

Two rereads because of the Levin novel

My Life as a man, Philip Roth

End Zone, Don Delillo

Delillo was better than I remembered, Roth wasn't as good.And this

Infinite Crisis, Geoff Johns, Phil Jimenez et al.which is crazy.

Yeah, that's a really fun DeLillo, I remember giving it as a gift to a friend before reading it, thinking that it was going to be just a well-written, straightforward sports novel (my friend is a baseball player so it's been a thing between us to give each other sports-themed novels: The Natural, The Universal Baseball Association, etc.), which of course, it wasn't (straightforward, I mean).

From what I've heard about Levin's novel I would have figured you would have re-read The Conversion of the Jews.

And yes, Infinite Crisis was definitely crazy, so much going on there, but great.

Also.... The Sea--John Banville ****0

[Loki]

It's a non-fiction book, but it's the same. I don't know if it's available in English or any other language:
Lenin, Dalla Pravda a Prada: storie da una rivoluzione. (Lenin, From Pravda to Prada: histories from a revolution).
It's divided inot two parts:
-the first, narrated by Anna Jampol'skaja, is about life in Russia before 1991: she tells the story of her childhood and adolescence more or less, how school was, what they did to pass the time, what they liked, the long queues at new shops... very funny (and sometimes sad too) and very interesting.
-the second, narrated by an Italian, is about Russia after 1991: it's about how life in Russia has (not) changed. It's been interesting reading how the Russian see Italy, or foreign cultures in general, what they think about Jews, how they (supposedly) see Putin, how university works (or worked)...

A very light reading but still very interesting: we'll have a talk about this book in the Russian class soon, so that we will understand some aspects of the book better.

[Daniel del Real]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/es.gif Antonio Gamoneda, León de la Mirada *****
http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/es.gif Gonzálo Torrente Ballester, Crónica del Rey Pasmado ****0

[peter_d]

I've never understood why the fact that you've just finished reading a book merits a special thread with that title - after all, you presumably wouldn't post a review of a book you vaguely remembered from twenty years ago?? - and if you've just finished it, why not review it under Writers or European Literature or Salman Rushdie or Australian Aboriginal Dream-Time Chants or wherever it belongs?

Personally I like this thread because it keeps you updated on what the people on this forum read. When I am reading an interesting, or not so interesting book, I search this thread to see if there's someone else who has recently read it and how he/she rated it. I presume that not everyone feels like writing an entire review of every book after having finished it (at least I don't). Just letting others know what you just read and maybe rate it with stars, is not a big effort, but yet of added value for this forum.

[sirena]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/pt.gif Equador - Miguel Sousa Tavares **000

[Eric]

I agree with Peter D (#3009) on this one.

The thing is that we are all limited to various nations and authors, and as this is, after all, called the World Literature Forum (the title is rather ambitious) it is interesting to be made aware of important books and authors outside our own little bubbles.

I have no lasting interest in Latin American literature, but when people say they've read Clarice Lispector or Mario Vargas Llosa, it can be worthwhile to see what those people, more in the know, think of such people's works. And they, in turn, often draw our attention to critical and review articles.

Like Peter, I also search the threads here for clues about books I'm reading. Sadly, I didn't find much about the Ajvaz book I've just read. But I did use the WLF search engine.

[Manuel76]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/es.gif Antonio Gamoneda, León de la Mirada *****
http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/es.gif Gonzálo Torrente Ballester, Crónica del Rey Pasmado ****0

I'm glad you liked Antonio Gamoneda. I never read anything by him, and it's a shame because he is, like me, from Oviedo and we don't have so many great writers from there.

[Daniel del Real]

I'm glad you liked Antonio Gamoneda. I never read anything by him, and it's a shame because he is, like me, from Oviedo and we don't have so many great writers from there.

His poetry is as charming as he is; soft, calmed, full of pauses and silences. I loved the way he read his poems and how gentle he was to everyone who came near to him to talk. I should have bought more of his books in FIL in the pavillión of Castilla and León, now it's going to be difficult to find more, damn it!