Recently finished books?

[waxwing]

The Ambassadors by Henry James *****

The first of James' long novels (his personal favorite) I've ever been able to complete. The first half was a struggle, I resorted to reading difficult passages aloud as I believe James dictated these later novels, and that helped. I zoomed through the second half, underneath all the erudition, the commas, and the artificial and theatrical world he creates, lies a master storyteller, and I have spent an inordinate amount of time the last few days pondering the fate of his fictional characters.

[Clarissa]

The Smile of the Lamb - David Grossman (trans. from the Hebrew Betty Rosenberg)

His first novel and, for a first, outstanding even if it is not as good as To the End of the Land. However, equally political although it takes place much earlier in time. Same theme of Palestinian-Israeli relatioships as well as the two men one woman situation. Still, from this first it is quite obvious that the man is a born writer. And an outstanding one. Already many surprising felicitous turn of phrases, some of which I have marked out to keep..

[Bjorn]

Patti Smith - Just Kids (USA)

I've read far too many variations on the autobiography recently, but even so, this is an excellent one - nudging *****. How much of that is caused by my worship of Patti and how much is due to the strength of the book I cannot say, but it has the same transparent light in it that her best songs do.

[lenz]

The Ambassadors by Henry James *****

The first of James' long novels (his personal favorite) I've ever been able to complete. The first half was a struggle, I resorted to reading difficult passages aloud as I believe James dictated these later novels, and that helped. I zoomed through the second half, underneath all the erudition, the commas, and the artificial and theatrical world he creates, lies a master storyteller, and I have spent an inordinate amount of time the last few days pondering the fate of his fictional characters.


I adore James, but The Ambassadors nearly killed me with boredom. It was only after finally getting through it that I realised the beauty of its structure and the realisation of the protagonist that his long quest for someone else's "truth" led only to himself and the love that was waiting patiently for him.

[Mirabell]

Scalped: Indian Country, Jason Aaron, R.M.Guéra
Scalped: Casino Boogie, Jason Aaron, R.M.Guéra
Scalped: Dead Mothers, Jason Aaron, R.M.Guéra et al.

amazing. Aaron must be one of the best new writers in mainstream comics around. I'm still reeling.

The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, Philip Pullman

[Mirabell]

The Ambassadors by Henry James *****

The first of James' long novels (his personal favorite) I've ever been able to complete. The first half was a struggle, I resorted to reading difficult passages aloud as I believe James dictated these later novels, and that helped. I zoomed through the second half, underneath all the erudition, the commas, and the artificial and theatrical world he creates, lies a master storyteller, and I have spent an inordinate amount of time the last few days pondering the fate of his fictional characters.

Yeah I plan on giving that one a whirl, ordered it two weeks ago, because of the new Ozick novel.

[waxwing]

Yeah I plan on giving that one a whirl, ordered it two weeks ago, because of the new Ozick novel.

We had the same idea. I'm halfway through the Ozick novel, Foreign Bodies (a variation of The Ambassadors) and I'm reading Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr Ripley next, another much more perverse variation.

[Daniel del Real]

Great European weekend:

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/at.gif Joseph Roth, Hotel Savoy ****0+
http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/it.gif Antonio Tabucchi, Little Misunderstadings of no Importance ****0+

[JTolle]

Explosion in a Cathedral--Alejo Carpentier ****0+

[Peeping Tom]

The Thousand by Kevin Guilfoile. A disappointment for me. Very derivative. **000+
I've read this a thousand times before.

[Stiffelio]

Jim Crace: Quarantine ****0.
A thought-provoking novel about Jesus's quarantine in the desert in the company of other pilgrims and a sinister character who somehow believes in his healing powers. A meditation about the myth of Jesus as a divine entity and a plausible explanation of the origin of Christianity. Very well written novel but maybe not for everybody's taste.

[Daniel del Real]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/ir.gif Ohmar Jahyam, Robba'iyat ***00
http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/co.gif Fernando Vallejo, La Vírgen de los Sicarios **000

[peter_d]

nl Arthur Japin, Vaslav *****
Beautifully written and fascinating story around legendary dancer and choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky. Japin is extremely skilful in making historical figures come alive. Remember this one and read it as soon as the translation in English appears. I equally enjoyed his novel 'Een schitterend gebrek', translated in English as 'In Lucia's eyes', which is based on true events in the life of Giacomo Casanova.

[Mirabell]

The Thousand by Kevin Guilfoile. A disappointment for me. Very derivative. **000+
I've read this a thousand times before.

really? crap. by the way, we have a thread on the man http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/showthread.php/35819-Kevin-Guilfoile?highlight=guilfoile

[Daniel del Real]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/es.gif Jorge Herralde, Para Roberto Bolaño ***00+
This is a compilation of lectures, interviews, chronicles and brief essays that Jorge Herralde, director of Anagrama publishing group and Bolaño's editor, came with in the next two years after Bolaño's death. It narrates the story between Herralde and Bolaño, how he came up to him in Anagrama in the mid 90's, his first book published with them, Estrella Distante, to its later success of the Premio de Novela Anagrama with Los Detectives Salvajes. Facts about his illness, the process of creation of his books and the hidden development for the majestic 2666, undercovered for years as Bolaño was still delivering a book yearly of novellas or short stories. It includes the lecture Herralde gave at Bolaño's funeral. Very interesting for Bolaño's fans but really brief.

[JTolle]

Players--Don DeLillo ***00+
The Living End--Stanley Elkin ***00+

[Peeping Tom]

really? crap. by the way, we have a thread on the man http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/showthread.php/35819-Kevin-Guilfoile?highlight=guilfoile

Maybe I was too harsh with my initial star rating (maybe a three?). It’s just that I was so disappointed because I expected more. I’ll expound on this more in the Kevin Guilfoile (http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/showthread.php/35819-Kevin-Guilfoile?highlight=guilfoile) thread.

[Daniel del Real]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/cl.gif Roberto Bolaño, El Secreto del Mal (The Secret of Evil) ****0
Of course it's the weakest short stories book by Bolaño, but we have to consider that many of these tales are not complete and are just skeletons of future, longer, well developed works. Still there are many of them I consider finished and some spectacular sketches of what could've become amazing novellas or short stories.

[Daniel del Real]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/al.gif Ismail Kadare, Three Elegies for Kosovo ****0
Kadare owns this unique style of history revival and how it impacts modern societies. This short book is key to understand the conflict in the Balcans, how it started and has remained over centuries.

[learna]

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

*****

The General and His Army by Georgi Vladimov which was awarded the Russian Booker Prize in 1995.

Although I do not share some Vladimov's angels on the GPW - if to put it aside - his book as a fiction is - if to say in one words - integral.

*****

[lenz]

Le Voyage d'Hiver - Amelie Nothomb
My first Nothomb. I'm not not sure what to make of it. I thought it sounded a bit like English chick-lit with some philosophy thrown in. But, I'll try again.

[Liam]

Cathal Ó Searcaigh: Light on Distant Hills: A Memoir

****0

Wonderful language, descriptions, situations, observations, etc.

Loved the description of language as the necessary sixth element: after water, air, earth, fire and sky.

His first work in English.

L.

[Vicki]

At the beginning of December, I read André Aciman's Call Me by Your Name (1970s-late 1990s, published in 2007) and was sobbing at the end. Then, by chance, 10 days later started F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night (1917-28; first published in 1934).

I was surprised by Call Me's similarities to Tender. Descriptions of the characters' villas on the French Riviera; the beaches below them; the wealthy, educated quirky guests; the strangers welcomed with open arms; the dinner parties; trips to Cannes and Rome; expat status; confused emotions of the main male characters. . . . Hard to believe Aciman--according to the cover bio, a teacher of comparative lit at City Univ of NY--would copy a Fitzgerald classic, but the resemblances were startling.

Both books are unputdownable.

[Mirabell]

Lord of Chaos, Robert Jordan

[Daniel del Real]

Le Voyage d'Hiver - Amelie Nothomb
My first Nothomb. I'm not not sure what to make of it. I thought it sounded a bit like English chick-lit with some philosophy thrown in. But, I'll try again.
Amen. Thank you so much.

[waxwing]

Foreign Bodies by Cynthia Ozick ***00
The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith ****0

Both these novels reference Henry James' The Ambassadors which I read directly before. The Ozick seemed rambling and unfocused to me. Lots of characters and globetrotting for a rather short novel. I thought the Paris sequences much the best and wish she had stayed there. Ripley struck me as great storytelling, a deceptively simple prose style slowly building an eerie atmosphere of tension. And Ripley the character is far more interesting than in the film versions, especially the Matt Damon one which explains his murderous tendencies from a well-worn repressed homosexual angle. In the novel, its more a crisis of identity, acute self-loathing, he just needs to be someone else.

[johnw1]

Barchester Towers - Anthony Trollope ****0

I enjoyed this a great deal. It's the first time I've read any of his books. He's a skilful storyteller and there some great comic scenes (like Bertie Stanhope trying not to propose to Mrs Bold) and fun, memorable characters (like the smily, ambitious Slope and the man-eating -if somewhat politically incorrect - Madame Neroni). I thought his female characters were particularly impressive - all powerful individuals and real movers-and-shakers.

I'm onto Dr Thorne now - the next in the Barsetshire series - although, for some reason I can't find it stocked in any local bookshops (which seems a shame) so I'm having to read it online. Enjoying it so far.

[Loki]

Barchester Towers - Anthony Trollope ****0

I enjoyed this a great deal. It's the first time I've read any of his books. He's a skilful storyteller and there some great comic scenes (like Bertie Stanhope trying not to propose to Mrs Bold) and fun, memorable characters (like the smily, ambitious Slope and the man-eating -if somewhat politically incorrect - Madame Neroni). I thought his female characters were particularly impressive - all powerful individuals and real movers-and-shakers.


I'm glad you've liked Trollope: I want to read The Warden as soon as I can, and your comment encourages me. Apparently he's not read much these days.

Anyway, shouldn't you have read The Warden first? It's the first of the Barsetshire novels.

[johnw1]

I'm glad you've liked Trollope: I want to read The Warden as soon as I can, and your comment encourages me. Apparently he's not read much these days.

Anyway, shouldn't you have read The Warden first? It's the first of the Barsetshire novels.

Yes he doesn't seem to be read so much now - by contrast to Eliot, Dickens etc. I'm not sure why as I've found him at least as readable. Maybe novels about church wardens, archdeacons and vicars infighting don't appeal to people's imaginations so much. Also, he lacks Eliot's reputation as a 'serious' writer and he admitted to writing for money and to a strict daily quota.

I should have read The Warden first but I just had Barchester Towers to hand and so started with that - I tend to read on impulse. Mr Harding, the hero of the former, was a major character in this too and I gathered the general gist of what had happened to him before. Trollope gave enough background info so the book stood on its own two feet so I didn't feel lost or anything.

[Loki]

he admitted to writing for money and to a strict daily quota.


Wasn't it a normal thing for writers such as Trollope, Dickens...? And I bet he's not the only one.

Now I'm even more curious to try Trollope.

[johnw1]

Wasn't it a normal thing for writers such as Trollope, Dickens...? And I bet he's not the only one.

Now I'm even more curious to try Trollope.

I don't think that Eliot did so explicitly write for money. Yes it's true, Dickens did but he seemed to write in bursts of creativity to suit crazy deadlines which maybe fits more with the perception of how art should come about as opposed to what could seem the mechanical way Trollope wrote. Also, Dickens is a pretty special case. I don't know, it's just a thought as to why Trollope is a bit neglected.

Also, Trollope maybe falls between two stools - neither entirely serious and philosophical/intellectual like Eliot nor flamboyant comic/grotesque like Dickens (and without the social critique too).

[Daniel del Real]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/pt.gif José Saramago, History of the Siege of Lisbon ***00+

[JTolle]

Chéri -- Colette ****0

A sheer and utter delight written with practically silken prose, Colette is a master of tone and atmosphere, now I know why Gass worships her. And I have La Fin de Chéri which I look forward to reading as well.

Great Jones Street -- Don DeLillo ***00

His third novel and not quite what I've come to expect from DeLillo, not bad per se, just not DeLillo, too many voices, too opaque, and, as Bucky Wunderlick desired, simply too excessive. The last chapter was pure DeLillo though, slow, full, and enigmatic, one of his great passages. Most bothersome was that I couldn't rid myself of the feeling that the novel was written in 3rd person though it was written in 1st, a feeling that did not bode well for my opinion of the novel as a whole.

[Manuel76]

La Nausée-J-P Sartre *****+
Great experience, but very depressing. I'm not very learned on existencialism either. Anyway the whole narration, even with its aim for universal value, only makes true sense when considered as experiences by a sick and depressed character (including the most famous chapter, that with the chesnut tree)

Làs-Bas- Huysmans ***00+
Decadent, unhealthy, affected, interesting but finally boring story about witchcraft and satanism in the modernist setting of the end of the XIX century.

La Jalousie- Robbe-Grillet *****
Extraordinary experiment from the noveau roman. Fascinating prose style (perhaps being a fan of Robbe-Grillet films helps) Jalousie is both jealousy and the Venetian blinds through which the whole story developes. Thanks Galatea for your help.

[waalkwriter]

***** Confessions of a Mask Yukio Mishima I'll try and toss out a thread on this eventually.

[johnw1]

Dr Thorne - Anthony Trollope

Very enjoyable. Some interesting characters and funny moments but the ending is a bit predictable.

[Elie]

Some holiday reading:

Stella Gibbons - Cold Comfort Farm
Emily Bronte - Wuthering Heights
Nancy Mitford - Love In A Cold Climate

[Daniel del Real]

***** Confessions of a Mask Yukio Mishima I'll try and toss out a thread on this eventually.

Finally you like something that is not Faulkner. Great for you Waalk,

[Daniel del Real]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/nl.gif Harry Mulisch, Siegfried *****
I'll have to add this novel as one of the best five novels I've read this ayer. Amazing exercise in order to comprehend history putting together fiction and philosophy.

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/pt.gif Fernando Pessoa, The Uknown in Himself, Anthology (Prologue, selection and translation by Octavio Paz) ****0
Still amazed by what a great poem Tabaquería is. The only bad thing about this book is that it was too short. Anyway, a great entrance to Pessoa's world with a very intelligent essay by Octavio Paz.

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/ar.gif Ricardo Piglia, La Ciudad Ausente (The Absent City) ****0
A lot to discuss with Bubba about Piglia and this novel in particular. I share few of his thoughts but disagree in most of them.

[Stiffelio]

gt Rodrigo Rey Rosa: Caballeriza (The Stable) ***00
Interesting thriller-style account of an episode in a Guatemalan horse-breeding estate where corruption and violence is rampant.

[Bjorn]

Neal Stephenson, Anathem (USA) ***00

Far too long, far too in love with its own clever ideas, and not nearly as much fun as the smart but completely insane Snow Crash. The last third, which is actually quite good, only barely draws the book out of **000 - worth reading, but I wouldn't blame anyone who gives up after 200 pages.

[Daniel del Real]

gt Rodrigo Rey Rosa: Caballeriza (The Stable) ***00
Interesting thriller-style account of an episode in a Guatemalan horse-breeding estate where corruption and violence is rampant.

I've heard nothing but good comments about Rey Rosa. Unfortunately his books are not widely spread across Mexico. I recently saw a book of short stories edited by a Mexican publishing group. I might start there. I think Anagrama also has one or two of his books.

[Daniel del Real]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/cl.gif Roberto Bolaño, La Universidad Desconocida (The Unknown University) ***00+

[Daniel del Real]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/al.gif Ismail Kadare, The Niche of Shame ***00+
Good novel but paling in comparison with the greatest from Kadare. Dull at the beggining, much better towards the end. If only he'd written more about the "Cra-cra" instead of head going this way, head going the other way, would've been so much better.

[Liam]

The Táin, translated by Ciaran Carson (2007).

Unforgettable. I mean, jaw-on-the-table type of unforgettable.

I highly recommend this medieval Irish heroic cycle to the rest of you.




"...he rested his brow against the hill..."




L.

[Mirabell]

finished a couple of books while on holiday in snowed-under East Germany

Wolverine: Old Man Logan, Mark Millar et al. Both disappointing and excellent.

The Instructions, Adam Levin. Brilliant.

Halting State, Charles Stross. B-Grade Crichton Pastiche

Söhne und Planeten, Clemens J. Setz

Kraken, China Miéville. Liked it less than TC&TC, but China can do no wrong.

and the last book I finished in 2010

Jimmy Corrigan, Chris Ware. Indulgent, but incredibly well made.

No books finished this year so far. Meh.

[waxwing]

Sunflower by Gyula Krudy ****0

I still haven't fully digested the intense over-the-top Romanticism. The translation is very poetic but with a couple of instances of some jarring slang. I especially chuckled when a character spouted "hot-diggity-dog." There's a character, Pistoli. referred to as a Hungarian Falstaff, and his downfall dominates the last section of the novel, it's very moving and scary, and makes me want to read some more Krudy.

A Question of Upbringing by Anthony Powell

I had planned to read the 12 novels of A Dance to the Music of Time one novel per month in 2011. I found the first one so absorbing I will have to deep-six that notion.

[JTolle]

A Question of Upbringing by Anthony Powell

I had planned to read the 12 novels of A Dance to the Music of Time one novel per month in 2011. I found the first one so absorbing I will have to deep-six that notion.

I'm very glad to hear that at least the first of these novels isn't the slog I was suspicious it might be. I'm hoping to make 2011 a year of longer reads after an overabundance of poetry, essays, and short novels last year and I was thinking of working through either A Dance to the Music of Time or In Search of Lost Time, I might be leaning toward Powell with this recommendation.

[Daniel del Real]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/fr.gif Jean Echenoz, Je M'en Vais ***00
http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/jp.gif Yasunari Kawabata, The Master of Go ****0

[waalkwriter]

Finally you like something that is not Faulkner. Great for you Waalk,

Hey. That's not true at all. I might take it back if you keep acting like that :P I think you should be more worried that I really liked an author you are also found of.

[Mirabell]

I'm very glad to hear that at least the first of these novels isn't the slog I was suspicious it might be. I'm hoping to make 2011 a year of longer reads after an overabundance of poetry, essays, and short novels last year and I was thinking of working through either A Dance to the Music of Time or In Search of Lost Time, I might be leaning toward Powell with this recommendation.


I read Proust a year ago in French (had to read/reread the whole Recherche for exams) and these books are among the best I ever read. Ever. Evaaar. This is not to disparage Powell, but I seriously doubt he's as good as the mustachio'd Frenchman. Because very, very, very few writers are. Not all of the Recherche is as good as its best books but even the somewhat lesser last books are great by other writers' standards.

[Colonel Green]

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel *****

I'm not really convinced by Mantel's depiction of Thomas Cromwell vis a vis the historical record, but as a work of historical fiction it's quite impressive. This Cromwell is quite an interesting character on his own, and Mantel's depictions of the usual suspects of these stories are generally quite interesting (though she seems unnecessarily hard on More while conversely being rather indulgent of Henry VIII). Though given the planned sequel, perhaps that will change as the lead character's POV does.

Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis ***00

And with this, I've now read something by all of the American Nobel Laureates. Anyhoo, this is a decent social satire, and I would probably have liked it more had I been reading it at the time; much like the long-since-played-out "everyone in the 1950s is secretly miserable" genre, this sort of satire of middle class conformists is exceedingly familiar. Of course, the reason it's so familiar is that a lot of people were copying Lewis and some other early writers, but there you go. Some very enjoyable writing, all the same.

[JTolle]

I read Proust a year ago in French (had to read/reread the whole Recherche for exams) and these books are among the best I ever read. Ever. Evaaar. This is to disparage Powell, but I seriously doubt he's as good as the mustachio'd Frenchman. Because very, very, very few writers are. Not all of the Recherche is as good as its best books but even the somewhat lesser last books are great by other writers' standards.

Well, I did read Swann's Way. And yes, yes, yes, unbelievable! I was literally entranced. I've been needing to read the rest since I finished it. The answer is clear. After I finish DeLillo, despite the immensity of the project, I'll try desperately to read both throughout the year. I probably won't finish either but it's nice to have a goal. Thanks.

[Stiffelio]

pe Mario Vargas Llosa: El Sueño del Celta ****0
Vargas Llosa's first post-Nobel and much anticipated novel about Roger Casement. Meticulously researched, deftly constructed novel about the falling of grace of a romantic idealist. Had it been written by anybody else I would have pronounced it as excellent, but for VLL's standards I honestly don't think it belongs with his best work. I will try to write a few more lines about it.

co Fernando Vallejo: El Don de la Vida ****0+
This is Vallejo at his sarcastic, politically incorrect, blasphemous best (or worst?). The title (The Gift of Life) is ironic as the novel is mostly about nostalgia and the wish for death, structured as a long conversation between a first person autobiographical narrator and death herself. Not for everybody but I loved it.

ar César Aira: El Divorcio ****0
I read this short novel to close 2010 and did so with a smile. Aira is getting better and better with each book, or rather, I'm becoming addicted to his style which, the more I read, the more I find deeply rooted in Borges.........but Borges on LSD! I love Aira's unpredictability. This one is about the multiplicity of stories contained in one chancy moment.

[Daniel del Real]

pe Mario Vargas Llosa: El Sueño del Celta ****0
Vargas Llosa's first post-Nobel and much anticipated novel about Roger Casement. Meticulously researched, deftly constructed novel about the falling of grace of a romantic idealist. Had it been written by anybody else I would have pronounced it as excellent, but for VLL's standards I honestly don't think it belongs with his best work. I will try to write a few more lines about it.

co Fernando Vallejo: El Don de la Vida ****0+
This is Vallejo at his sarcastic, politically incorrect, blasphemous best (or worst?). The title (The Gift of Life) is ironic as the novel is mostly about nostalgia and the wish for death, structured as a long conversation between a first person autobiographical narrator and death herself. Not for everybody but I loved it.

ar César Aira: El Divorcio ****0
I read this short novel to close 2010 and did so with a smile. Aira is getting better and better with each book, or rather, I'm becoming addicted to his style which, the more I read, the more I find deeply rooted in Borges.........but Borges on LSD! I love Aira's unpredictability. This one is about the multiplicity of stories contained in one chancy moment.

Interest selection of Latin American writers. After reading La Vírgen de los Sicarios by Vallejo, which I dislike, I think I'm done for some time with him. It's really funny to listen him in a conference but page after page of the same rants against everything is too much, even for me. His books are well written, but nothing extraordinary, so the form is nothing great either.

I have El Sueño del Celta waiting to be read. However I wouldn't consider it the first post-Nobel book. Although it was published after Nobel, he had been working on it for the the last few years and when he was announced as Nobel winner the novel was already finished.

[Daniel del Real]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/mz.gif Mia Couto, Venenos de Deus, Remédios do Diabo (Poisons of God, Remedies from the Devil) *****
A true gem very early in this year. Didn't expect it. A pleasant surprise

[Bjorn]

Kristian Lundberg, Yarden (Sweden) ****0
Justly praised little gem; a modern-day reinvention of the classic Scandinavian proletarian novel. Lundberg is an acclaimed poet, which pays about as well as you'd imagine, so having wasted his youth on poetry and drugs the only thing that remains if he wants his kid to eat is the lowest of minimum-wage jobs - unloading ships in Malmö harbour in the middle of the winter, hired by the hour, never knowing if he'll make enough to buy food next month. Terse, poetic, harsh.

AA Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner (UK) ***** and ****0
It's been way too long since I re-read these. Warms you up better than a blanket.

Indra Sinha, Animal's People (UK) ****0
Imagine Vikram Seth's Q&A (that's Slumdog Millionaire to movie fans) if it had actually been well written and had a cast of interesting characters... plus a very foul-mouthed narrator. Liked it, but not perfect. Will try to write more about it.

[Eric]

Interesting, Björn, that people are still writing proletarian novels in Sweden. I thought that a Kristian Lundberg was a Christian poet. Is this the same one? (Winnie the Pooh must be a bit of a contrast!)

[Eric]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/fi.gif Tove Jansson: Trollvinter ****0

Just finished reading something relatively light over Christmas - a Moomin book. What is interesting about this book is that it indeed says something to adults, as well as children. Jansson always introduces dark aspects of life into her Moomin books, which makes them less anodyne and goody-goody than some children's literature. And it is this aspect which makes the Moomin books palatable for adults.

The security of the home is contrasted with the snowy winter and wide open spaces. The summer nostalgia of the bathing hut near the sea is in sharp contrast with the snowdrifts. There are a number of invisible creatures, but the visible ones are the usual suspects that are in many of the Moomin books, for instance the tiny but spiteful Lilla My (Little My in English) and the typically bumptious, self-centred, but ultimately kind-hearted Hemulen (who reminds me of some Helsinki Swedish-speakers - Jansson was one herself, but much more low-key).

In between, I read a few of Tove Jansson's stories for adult consumption. She was a very perceptive observer and describer of human nature.

[learna]

Light in August by William Faulkner.

It is a deep description or even investigation of despair, internal tension and the racial conflict of America. And the combination of the general idea of the novel and Faulkner's style looks perfect.

****0+

[JTolle]

Light in August by William Faulkner.

It is a deep description or even investigation of despair, internal tension and the racial conflict of America. And the combination of the general idea of the novel and Faulkner's style looks perfect.

****0+

I have not read nearly enough of Faulkner, but this is certainly one of my all-time favorite novels.

Exiles -- Ron Hansen ***00

My first book of 2011 and not very good overall. A fictionalized account of the life of poet Gerard Manley Hopkins and the sea-disaster on which Hopkins' famous poem "The Wreck of the Deutschland" is based. An overly researched and spoon-fed book, where Hansen needs to explain to me that medical aid was not very advanced in the 19th Cent. and that ships then did not "have wireless communication". However, the last 50 pages were much better, and I adore Hopkins, so everything was bearable, but mostly educational. A tearjerker though.

[learna]

I have not read nearly enough of Faulkner, but this is certainly one of my all-time favorite novels.




JTolle, I thought about five stars, I indeed felt the extremity of a racial problem without any analysis but relatively recently I had read The Sound and the Fury which impressed me by developing and changing of style according to protagonists and by the vivid description of the inner tention of a small boy, his perception of the world through smells in the first part of the novel . I think that it played its part ( I cannot remember the English variant of this saying at this moment:-) ).

[Daniel del Real]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/ao.gif Pepetela, O Desejo de Kianda (The Return of the Water Spirit) ***00+

[e joseph]

The Cannibal - John Hawkes
Incomprehensible as far as "plot" and beautifully written. I enjoyed The Beetle Leg (the only other Hawkes I've read) more, but this one was fun as well. Strikes me as a more experimental Cormac McCarthy maybe? Dunno. Someone smarter/more well read interject here.

[Colonel Green]

Ysabel by Guy Gavriel Kay ****0

Another of Guy Gavriel Kay's books, the only one set mainly in the present. It turns out to be a sequel to the "Fionavar Tapestry" trilogy midway through, due to the presence of two characters, but this isn't advertised, and ultimately it's mainly a sideline to the main story - though I imagine the novel would be a lot less effective in places to those who hadn't read it (the characters' backstory is only slightly alluded to in spots, but their dialogue frequently subtly references the earlier stories). I liked seeing what became of them.

The main story is nicely done, overall. Kay's writing is engaging, though he's got a couple of tics that annoy me - most notably, the tendency to repeat characters' full names constantly (mostly with just two, Edward Marriner and Kate Wenger). Reminds me of Rick Riordan continually repeating "Rachel Elizabeth Dare" in his books. It has two teenaged characters as quasi-leads (though Kate actually turns out to be more than a little unnecessary), but it doesn't feel at all like a YA novel, which I've seen some people call it.

[JTolle]

The Cannibal - John Hawkes
Incomprehensible as far as "plot" and beautifully written. I enjoyed The Beetle Leg (the only other Hawkes I've read) more, but this one was fun as well. Strikes me as a more experimental Cormac McCarthy maybe? Dunno. Someone smarter/more well read interject here.

Well, I haven't read enough McCarthy to give a firm opinion on that, but I certainly could see parallels in the sudden menacing bouts of violence and atmospheric unsettling. Though, so far in my reading, Hawkes seems the superior writer. I also know what you mean by its being "incomprehensible as far as plot" because The Lime Twig was a novel of perplexing nightmare-logic. I like Flannery O'Connor's quote a great deal,


"You suffer The Lime Twig like a dream. It seems to be something that is happening to you, that you want to escape from but can't. The reader even has that slight feeling of suffocation that you have when you can't wake up and some evil is being worked on you. This...I might have been dreaming myself."

Which is a very clear way to express the force of a book that is sinisterly murky and, yes, terribly 'suffocating'. Hugely recommended and more accessible with some Hawkes behind you.

[miercuri]

Nice Work - David Lodge ***00
Somewhat overlong and overstated and bland, like I sort of was expecting it to be. Oh well.

[Bjorn]

Nice Work - David Lodge ***00
Somewhat overlong and overstated and bland, like I sort of was expecting it to be. Oh well.
Heh, that book somehow ended up on my Business English lit list at the university, and that's pretty much exactly what I thought of it too. I remember a really dull sex scene and a lot of stereotypical characters, and that's about it.

[Daniel del Real]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/sv.gif Horacio Castellanos Moya, El Asco, Thomas Bernhard en San Salvador *****+

Hilarious, funny as hell! A while since I hadn't laughed out loud reading a novel. It was even more special since I'm reading Berhnard's Frost at the same time. Finally I hit the nail with a CM book. Don't know if it has been translated yet, but I really really recommend it

[Stiffelio]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/sv.gif Horacio Castellanos Moya, El Asco, Thomas Bernhard en San Salvador *****+

Hilarious, funny as hell! A while since I hadn't laughed out loud reading a novel. It was even more special since I'm reading Berhnard's Frost at the same time. Finally I hit the nail with a CM book. Don't know if it has been translated yet, but I really really recommend it

You are a good reader, for reading these two books back-to-back. As you know El Asco is Castellanos Moya's direct homage to Thomas Bernhard. He even admits to purposedly having written it imitating Bernhard's style. It's curious, though, that you don't like Fernando Vallejo, another writer who writes in the same 'tone' (albeit different style) as Bernhard.

[Colonel Green]

Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak ***00

In the course of my Nobel reading project, with some authors there are a host of works to choose from; in some cases, though, there's really only one really legitimate choice if you want to say you've "read" them, and with Pasternak that's Doctor Zhivago.

I'd previously seen the famous movie, which I suspect coloured my impression of this a bit. Normally when you read a famous novel of this length, compared to film versions, there's varying degrees of important stuff that really adds to the film (the most extreme case would be something like The Count of Monte Cristo, where whole sections running for hundreds of pages get cleaved out). I didn't really feel like that was the case here; of course, Lean's film was quite long, and so pretty comprehensive, but the result is a broad sense of reading something I'm already mostly familiar with. There are some supporting characters who didn't make it into the film, many sequences go on for longer (Zhivago's time with the partisans, for instance), and some things have been rearranged (Zhivago's half-brother is considerably less prominent than he is in the film, for instance). Oh, and sporadic speculation about the nature of art and beauty (note to all aspiring artists: when tempted to include this in your stories, as a general rule, resist it; it's almost never as interesting as you think it is). In particular, I was disappointed that the book didn't really improve on some of the problems I had with the film; most notably Yuri separating from Lara, which has never made much sense to me, and his relationships with the various women in general (the novel even adds in another woman he falls in with on returning to St. Petersburg at the end). Still an interesting read, and its historical impact can't be denied, but, eh.

[Mirabell]

Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak ***00




which translation?

[Colonel Green]

Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky; I always go for them when possible (their War and Peace is magnificent).

[marinacb]

The Devil in the White City - Erik Larson http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/smilies/4-star.gif
Very interesting book based on real events surrounding the Chicago World Fair in 1893 and the factual account of how the first documented US serial killer managed to perfect his hobby almost unnoticed. It describes very thoroughly the architectural challenges of the Fair and all the social life at the time, combining the stories of the two main characters of the book: the main architect responsible for the Fair's construction and the doctor that charmed all his victims.

The Little Buddha - Claus Mikosch http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/smilies/3-star.gif
Charming little book that reminds me of The Little Prince.

[miercuri]

The Prophet Murders - Mehmet Murat Somer
Probably the silliest read of the year, unless I decide to pursue the entire series. It's set in Istanbul, where a drag-queen amateur detective (who styles herself after Audrey Hepburn) is out and about investigating murders and the likes. I don't think this is fit for a regular rating system. :p
The Plato Papers - Peter Ackroyd
I really liked this at first but then the gimmick got predictable really quick and I found the second half quite unimpressive. ***00

[Raphael Lambach]

I'm not used to read biographies but I've just read Bowie: a biography by Marc Spitz, an amazing portrait of Bowie's life.
As truly literature I read a few week ago Ian McEwan's Solar.

[peter_d]

us Philip Roth - Everyman ***00

Probably a strange choice to start with if you have never read anything else by the author. I recognised the mastery in his writing, but the content was just too depressing for me to really enjoy it.

[Loki]

Gaius Valerius Catullus- Liber (complete poems). ***00+

After reading all the poems, I can't say Catullus has become my favourite poet, but still I've appreciated him. His poetry is very varied: it includes love poems (especially for Lesbia and Iuventius), invectives (against false friends, acquaintances, and even Julius Caesar), poems about everyday life, and the so called carmina docta. These are longer (even 400 verses) and more complex poems, where the style is really higher, and the subjects are different (myths, weddings...).
I've appreciated him for his love poetry (which doesm't mean just the "Odi et amo" poem), for the style of some of his poetry, and to a certain extent to his bluntness, which often becomes rudeness.

Just a brief poem, actually quite funny:
Oh what a funny thing, Cato, and a jest,
and worthy of your laughter and ears!
Laugh as much as you love Catullus, Cato:
the thing is funny and very much a joke.
I just caught a little boy thrusting away
into a girl; I banged him, if it please Dione,
with my boner like a spear.

[Bjorn]

Isaac Bashevis Singer - The Slave (US) ****0 +

I'm pretty sure I've read Singer before - Shadows On The Hudson over 10 years ago - but I don't remember much about it, so this was like discovering a new author. Very good stuff. Any recommendations on where to go from here?

[Mirabell]

The collected stories. FSG published a very cheap pb of his collected which is all kinds of awesome. as for novels, I loved the slave, but also Enemies: A LOve STory.

[Bjorn]

Collected Stories looks like a good buy. Putting it on my list. Thanks!

[Daniel del Real]

You are a good reader, for reading these two books back-to-back. As you know El Asco is Castellanos Moya's direct homage to Thomas Bernhard. He even admits to purposedly having written it imitating Bernhard's style. It's curious, though, that you don't like Fernando Vallejo, another writer who writes in the same 'tone' (albeit different style) as Bernhard.

Although Castellanos Moya and Vallejo have some similarities in their styles I find a very different message coming out of their texts. Specially in El Asco, Castellanos Moya writes as Fernando Vallejo speaks. As I told you I was laughint out loud when I saw him live back in November last year. However in his texts there is more rage against everything, so oppresive that doesn't allow the reader to have a laugh as his rants are devastating. He doesn't ridicules, he condemns and that is different.
La Virgen de los Sicarios can be considered El Asco for Medellín, and sure there are some points that are funny, but he faces them with such despise that it doesn't give space for anything that is not emptiness and death. And of course he is far away from Bernhards digressions full of philisophy and beauty.
I don't know how to explain it further, but that is the main idea between them I see.

On the other side, completing the task:

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/at.gif Thomas Bernhard, Frost ****0

[Colonel Green]

The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay *****

A fascinating piece of quasi-fantasy fiction set in an alternate version of Spain. The story is a big platitude on religious toleration, though I do wonder if the idea (which is pretty ubiquitous these days; Kay is hardly the only one) that people motivated primarily by religious fanaticism are somehow worse than people who are willing to kill anyone to get a slightly bigger house. I kind of suspect it's just because modern westerners tend to be a lot closer to the latter mindset than the former. I continue to be impressed by Kay's prose style, though he perhaps use the perspective trick on the audience a few too many times here. It's almost a flaw in the novel that he creates so many interesting side-characters who you could see being interesting to follow off-screen (Queen Ines, for instance).

[Stiffelio]

ie Colm Tóibín: Brooklyn ****0+
A beautifully told coming of age story about a young Irish woman in the 50s who emigrates to America, struggles to adapt, finds a boyfriend, then needs to go back to Ireland and then......A novel about displacement and about the conflicts between love and duty, and many more things. This is my first Tóibín book and I'm pretty sure I'll revisit this fabulous writer soon.

[Liam]

ie This is my first Tóibín book and I'm pretty sure I'll revisit this fabulous writer soon.
In which case, may I suggest the beautifully written short story collection Mothers & Sons or the profound meditation on life and the artistic experience that is The Master? Then again, you may want to continue with The Story of the Night, set as it is in Buenos Aires, Argentina, :).

[Daniel del Real]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/hu.gif Laszlo Krasznahorkai, From North a Hill, from South a Lake, from East a Road, from West a River ***00

[Stevie B]

All the WLF chatter about Arto Passilinna's The Year of the Hare made me curious. I ordered a copy a week ago and just finished reading it with my 11-year-old son. It was a fun and enjoyable read though it did seem to peter out a bit at the end. ****0

[Bjorn]

Iain Banks, The Wasp Factory (UK) ****0, almost *****. Disgusting, devious, deconstructing, damn. Also bloody hilarious, and I do mean bloody.

Also read the first two volumes of Bill Willingham's Fables, a comic book based on the idea that all the old fairy tale characters are living undercover in New York and dealing with their own various political and interpersonal issues (Snow White is the boss, the Big Bad Wolf is the sheriff, the three little pigs are Orwellian revolutionaries, etc). Better than it sounds, but not a lot better. I'm told it gets better as it goes along, and the second volume starts to actually use the fact that these are fairytale characters, but it doesn't make me want to hunt down the rest screaming "MUST READ NOW!"

[Mirabell]

Imagine Vikram Seth's Q&A....

That is Vikas Swarup. Vikram Seth, author of An Equal Music, Two Lives and the Golden Bridge is actually a fine novelist

[Bjorn]

That is Vikas Swarup. Vikram Seth, author of An Equal Music, Two Lives and the Golden Bridge is actually a fine novelist
My bad. Brain no work after holidaze.

[Colonel Green]

Solomon Gursky Was Here by Mordecai Richler ****0

Mordecai Richler's penultimate novel, and, as far as I can tell, his longest (500+ pages in this edition). An interesting read, very different from Duddy Kravitz in narrative style, though some of the locales and character types are similar; it's a sprawling, non-linear historical fiction about a Jewish-Canadian family's exploits over a period of about 200 years. Richler's got a very caustic tone towards most, if not all, of the cast, who are mostly horrible in one way or another. This sort of thing can be offputting, but Richler writes things quite amusingly (unlike some serious novels that try to get by without any likeable characters, which are miserable, comedies can do that). He's clearly having fun, particularly in the historical sections set in the 19th century focusing on the huckster founder of the Gursky dynasty.

[Daniel del Real]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/es.gif Eduardo Mendoza, El Misterio de la Cripta Embrujada ***00+
A nice mixture of a thriller and a picaresque novel. Started very strong but towards the end it seems that the author didn't now what to do and jams everything together in an akward way. Still, I enjoyed my first trip to this writer.

[waxwing]

Baltasar and Blimunda by Jose Saramago (1982) ***00

Some beautiful passages, but overall I was disappointed with my first Saramago. I found the historical characters - the King, the flying priest Bartolomeu, Scarlatti - far more interesting than the downtrodden B+B, even when endowed with magical powers. And the anti-clerical bits, all the horny friars, grew tedious, the author quarrelling with a God he presumably doesn't believe exists. But I'm on to Ricardo Reis in a couple of weeks, these are initial impressions, I'm probably all wet.

The Moving Target by Ross Macdonald (1949) ***00

Macdonald's first Lew Archer mystery, the author so admired in his prime he once made the front cover review of the Sunday NY Times Book Review when it was considered prestigous, maybe the first for a genre novel. Macdonald was the grandmaster of the hard-boiled simile, so good at it he tended to overdo it. Dysfunctional families and Freudian complexes was his beat, some later novels (The Good-bye Look, Sleeping Beauty) are better, but Target's not bad either.

A is for Alibi by Sue Grafton (1982) **000

Grafton, a Macdonald disciple, introduced her life toughened female sleuth, Kinsey Millhone, in this initial outing of her alphabet mystery series. No pleasing similes here, or artistic pretensions, but a competent enough craftsmanship with one serious stumble, having Kinsey get sexually involved with a prime suspect, something considered strictly taboo in Archer's moral code.

A Buyer's Market by Anthony Powell (1952) ****0

The second novel of the Dance cycle. The comedy is of the highest level, including the adroit, laugh-out-loud manner Powell re-assembles almost all the many characters from the first novel, five years later, into one long night of revelry.

[Manuel76]

The Canterbury Tales- Geoffrey Chaucer *****++

[accidie]

The Experience of the Night, Marcel Bealu. Strange novel by a hat-maker first issued in 1945. The hero goes to an ophthamologist and thenceforth has a series of strange adventures in even stranger settings, until he is by choice imprisoned in the ophthamologist's castle where he is guarded by robotic statues. Don't know how to summon stars, but would give it 3 1/2; would have given it more save for a very slight unevenness.

[Daniel del Real]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/it.gif Antonio Tabucchi, Tristano Dies ****0

[Bjorn]

Roberto Bolaño, By Night In Chile (Chile) ****0

Not quite the gutpunch that 2666 was, but still a very strong novel. The only obvious thing that keeps it from ***** is the very silly and overdone names he gives to the two villains, and I'm not sure how much of that is the (otherwise excellent) translator's fault - yeah, it's minor, but it's that silly.

[JTolle]

Roberto Bolaño, By Night In Chile (Chile) ****0

Not quite the gutpunch that 2666 was, but still a very strong novel. The only obvious thing that keeps it from ***** is the very silly and overdone names he gives to the two villains, and I'm not sure how much of that is the (otherwise excellent) translator's fault - yeah, it's minor, but it's that silly.

Mr. Raef and Mr. Etah? Oh yeah. Other than 2666 this is the only of his novels I've read and I think I gave it the same rating.

[Stiffelio]

Mr. Raef and Mr. Etah?

Bolaño tried to be funny about that and the joke in fact works better in the original Spanish: Oido and Odeim (which spelled backwards would read Odio (hatred) and Miedo (fear), respectivelly)

[Bjorn]

It does work better in Spanish, but in both the English and the Swedish (Mr Asaf and Mr Tah) translations it comes across as something out of a comic book for 7-year-olds. Bolaño did such a fine job in staying on the subtle side for most of the book, but that joke is about as subtle as if he'd just had Urrutia address the reader with "You know what? I learned something today. Silence in the face of fascism is bad." It would probably have bugged me less if he'd actually named them Fear and Hate.

[Mirabell]

Roberto Bolaño, By Night In Chile (Chile) ****0

Not quite the gutpunch that 2666 was, but still a very strong novel. The only obvious thing that keeps it from ***** is the very silly and overdone names he gives to the two villains, and I'm not sure how much of that is the (otherwise excellent) translator's fault - yeah, it's minor, but it's that silly.

Hey, that was supposed to be our bookbabble group read!

[Bjorn]

Hey, that was supposed to be our bookbabble group read!
Are you suggesting that I won't remember it a month or so from now? ;) (I was going to save it, but thanks to a deadline and a delayed book delivery I had to squeeze in something short over the weekend...)

[Mirabell]

I had to squeeze in something short over the weekend...

that's what she said


;)

[Daniel del Real]

Baltasar and Blimunda by Jose Saramago (1982) ***00

Some beautiful passages, but overall I was disappointed with my first Saramago. I found the historical characters - the King, the flying priest Bartolomeu, Scarlatti - far more interesting than the downtrodden B+B, even when endowed with magical powers. And the anti-clerical bits, all the horny friars, grew tedious, the author quarrelling with a God he presumably doesn't believe exists. But I'm on to Ricardo Reis in a couple of weeks, these are initial impressions, I'm probably all wet.


Although this is one of his earlier novels I wouldn't recommend it as a starting point to Saramago. In this case, I'd tell early readers to start by his later work (90's novels) in order to fully comprehend his writing style, his obsessions and strong topics he always deals with.
For reading Memorial do Convento, you have to be really patient, go little by little and have a background on Saramago's ideas as this was considered by himself his more personal novel, his favourite. First time I read it, happened something similar to me, couldn't understand its greatness and thought it was good, but that's it. I re-read it last year and it blew me away.
So my recommendations would be:
1.- Don't give up on Saramago and try either The Gospel According to Jesus Christ or Blindness.
2.- If you get to like Saramago, in a few years go back and re read this novel.


Bolaño tried to be funny about that and the joke in fact works better in the original Spanish: Oido and Odeim (which spelled backwards would read Odio (hatred) and Miedo (fear), respectivelly)

Yeah, that's right, it works better in Spanish, even though I didn't like it either. I agree with Bjorn that he could have made something way better with the names of these characters than that. However that wasn't what kept it away froma 5 star for me. It is good in its form and how fast it is described, but althought this is what the author was looking for, he still couldn't round it up as good as he did in another short novel, Estrella Distante.

[Stiffelio]

at Daniel Kehlmann: Measuring the World ***00
This is an interesting novel about the lives of two of the greatest German scientists of the early nineteenth century, Alexander von Humboldt and Carl Gauss. We learn about their findings, their travels, their personal vicissitudes and their radically different ways of approaching science, all written entertainingly in alternating chapters centered on each of the protagonists. Certainly fascinating material that could have become a brilliant novel of ideas but somehow, at least to this reader, it felt short of the expectations. Perhaps the rigid German to English translation didn't help much, especially in the dialogues, where the apparently funny non-sequiturs do not come through fully accomplished.

[Clarissa]

Perhaps the rigid German to English translation didn't help much, especially in the dialogues, where the apparently funny non-sequiturs do not come through fully accomplished.

I read this last year in German; the translation probably did not do justice to the original. I found it remarkable. Wonder what Mirabell has to say!

[Mirabell]

I read this last year in German; the translation probably did not do justice to the original. I found it remarkable. Wonder what Mirabell has to say!

I largely agree with Björn and Stiffelio in their assessment. I think it's an entertaining, slight book, written competently.

[e joseph]

Jakov Lind's (by way of Ralph Manheim) Landscape in Concrete

The horrors of war depicted in what feels like a dreamy fairytale kind of way. Between this novel and his story collection Soul of Wood, I'm really digging Lind. Feels sorta Vonnegut-ty to me. Maybe just a lazy comparison though; could just be the hair/moustache combo. Anyone read him in German? Curious to know how he reads in the original.

[Colonel Green]

Sailing to Sarantium by Guy Gavriel Kay ****0
Lord of Emperors by Guy Gavriel Kay *****

The "Sarantine Mosaic" duology, Kay's only multi-part book after his initial "Fionavar" trilogy, which makes him something of an oddity in the modern fantasy genre, which is usually all about big series. Anyway, he continues to use thinly-veiled fantasy counterparts to the real world - and he's damn good at it; not to mention, if you know the histories he's using, it both adds to your appreciations and gives extra force to plot swerves that diverge heavily from the historical record. The level of detail is tremendous; I'm sure a lot of people would write an historical novel based on an analogue of Justinian, but how many of them would include an analogue for Procopius? It also occurs to me that Byzantine history in general is tremendously underused as a source for historical fiction; surely we've mined just about all we can out of Elizabethan England by now. The Emperor Heraclius is just crying for somebody to write a big novel about his life.

The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum by Heinrich Boll **000

How can the work of someone who was supposedly a bit of a leftist firebrand be so dull? There's some vaguely amusing stuff here and there, but it mostly reads like a mediocre episode of Law & Order.

[JTolle]

The Trial -- Franz Kafka trans. Breon Mitchell ****0+ (reread)
Enter Invisible -- Catherine Wing ***00+

The dust-jacket tell me "Wing incorporates the voices of Auden and Stevens" which rings distinctly false. I'd say anyone reading this collection should be hearing Ashbery and Hopkins foremost, with certainly a touch of Stevens, but hardly a note of Auden. Quite an absurd set of poems, but delightful, if, at times, too trite and cartoonish.

Brideshead Revisited -- Evelyn Waugh *****+

One of my all-time favorite novels! Utterly delightful, just lovely prose and such sad, fated characters. I can't wait to read more Waugh, I hope he didn't outdo himself in this novel.

[Mirabell]

Disobedience, Alice Notley

[Mirabell]

The Other Side, Jason Aaron and Cameron Stewart

Shadowmarch, Tad Williams.

[Jayaprakash]

Flight Without End by Joseph Roth.

[Daniel del Real]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/hr.gif Dubravka Ugresic, The Ministry of Pain ***00+

[Mirabell]

Flight Without End by Joseph Roth.

niccccce!!

[Peeping Tom]

The Black Book by Orhan Pamuk. This was my first time reading Pamuk. I have to say, this was tough going. After a nice start, it settled down to being a tedious read, slow moving, and incredibly repetitive. I almost gave up two or three times. But I took a deep breath and kept at it, and I’m glad I did. The ending was its saving grace. But, it sure took a long time getting there. ****0 but just barely.

[Stiffelio]

ar Gustavo Nielsen: La Otra Playa ****0
This is the first book I read by Nielsen and I was very positively impressed. It is a very well structured short novel where reality is mixed up with the supernatural and where we are left to find out which is which. Two characters try to come to terms with unsolved personal issues and somehow converge onto each other's lives. Chilly and entertaning read!

[JTolle]

Fever and Other New Poems -- Bella Akhmadulina trans. Dutton and Koriakin ****0

I don't have the book on hand, so I can't remember the name of the final poem of this book, but that was my highlight, much better than "Fever", which must have suffered greatly in translation. I was impressed by all her work, but especially the longer pieces were outstanding (except "Fever"), though many of her shorter poems fell flat with me. I'll try to get The Garden (trans. F.D. Reeve) which contains some prose as well. I thank her for forcing me to look into Tsvetaeva, who is an even better poet as far as I've read in both.

Tears and Saints -- Emil Cioran trans. Ilinca Zarifopol-Johnston (I feel impertinent rating this)

[Stiffelio]

Amélie Nothomb: Stupeur et Tremblements ****0+
This is a jolly good little novel. Nothomb makes a gibe at corporate Japan in this hilarious, kafkian, autobiographical nouvelle. I think I'm becoming one more in Nothomb's army of fans.

[Eric]

Hurray, Stiffelio! Lionel and myself can't hold the fort for long on our own against the slaughterous savagery of the anti-Nothumbs onslaught. She has humour, and knocks things off pedestals where she sees fit.

[miercuri]

Amélie Nothomb: Stupeur et Tremblements ****0+
This is a jolly good little novel. Nothomb makes a gibe at corporate Japan in this hilarious, kafkian, autobiographical nouvelle. I think I'm becoming one more in Nothomb's army of fans.
This is the only one I've read from her up to now, but I have to agree. I was equally impressed with it. Witty little book and quite penetrating.

[Mirabell]

I think I'm becoming one more in Nothomb's army of fans.

noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

[e joseph]

Suttree - Cormac McCarthy
What a fantastic read! Equally funny and sad, gloriously written. I'm still bowing down to Blood Meridian as my favorite McCarthy book, but this one's no slouch. Plus the character Gene Harrogate now gives me an argument against all 'Cormac McCarthy can't write sympathetic characters' naysayers. And to pimp this book one more time: read and enjoyed Suttree and Blood Meridian? great, read Outer Dark next. Enjoy.

[Mirabell]

Suttree - Cormac McCarthy
What a fantastic read! Equally funny and sad, gloriously written. I'm still bowing down to Blood Meridian as my favorite McCarthy book, but this one's no slouch. Plus the character Gene Harrogate now gives me an argument against all 'Cormac McCarthy can't write sympathetic characters' naysayers. And to pimp this book one more time: read and enjoyed Suttree and Blood Meridian? great, read Outer Dark next. Enjoy.

Suttree is my favorite. The two are so incredibly great though that I'm afraid to read any more lest I feel as let down as I was reading The Road.

[e joseph]

Suttree is my favorite. The two are so incredibly great though that I'm afraid to read any more lest I feel as let down as I was reading The Road.
Unacceptable. Outer Dark is a completely different book, and more importantly feels written by a very different writer. I've read your thoughts regarding, and felt the same way about, The Road. I feel confident recommending you check it out, which I don't take lightly. It's not Suttree or Blood Merdian, but miles ahead of The Road (or No Country for Old Men while we're at it).

[Stiffelio]

noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

C'mon, Mirabell, she needs you.......she needs a German fan :-)

[Mirabell]

C'mon, Mirabell, she needs you.......she needs a German fan :-)

she's quite popular here. as are Dan Brown, Ken Follett and Jonathan Franzen.

[Daniel del Real]

C'mon, Mirabell, she needs you.......she needs a German fan :-)

The Latin American fan spot is already covered to my relief :rolleyes:

[waxwing]

Fear and Trembling by Amelie Nothomb **000

I was bothered by the well-worn cultural stereotypes, the insistence of the Japaneseness of her work experiences rather than an approach of a more universal corporate insanity. There are some very funny bits, but as the narrator sinks to deeper levels of degradation, the novella becomes less comic, and more of a glib, gloomy exercise in masochism.

The Master by Colm Toibin ****0

A beautiful fictional rendering of Henry James, of an artist proficient in observing and reflecting, but not so much in living, which may describe many readers' lives as well. I found the structure a bit choppy and episodic at times. I kept wondering why so little of famous brother William, but Toibin delivers in the final section with a very poignant reunion of sorts with William, a harsh critic of Henry's writings, and wife Alice. Very interesting, complex relationships. The novel has whetted my appetite for more late James, either The Golden Bowl or The Wings of the Dove.

[JTolle]

Two graphic novels

The Quitter -- Harvey Pekar
It's a Good Life, If You Don't Weaken -- Seth

And a new addition to my list of favorite novels:

The Power and the Glory -- Graham Greene *****

Reading this so quickly after Brideshead Revisited adds a resonance to the despair, and final (intended) dissatisfaction the novel leaves a reader with; only a sliver of hope to bring out with you when you finish. Can't get enough of Greene's sentences, it's been a while since I've seen something so genuinely fresh.

[Stiffelio]

it Dacia Maraini: Buio ***00+
'Buio' means 'Darkness' in Italian and darkness indeed is what comes through the pages of this strong collection of twelve stories, all apparently based on real cases taken from the crime pages of newspapers. Maraini is a brave writer and she wears her heart on her sleeve telling theses stories about atrocious crimes committed on minors, such as rape, prostitution and murder, and indicting a sick society that allows these crimes to happen, where parents and neglectful officials are often to blame as much as the perpetrators. The journalistic style to Maraini's writing is probably aimed at creating detachment; I would have preferred a more 'ficticious' approach to enhance the literary quality of the stories. This book won the Strega Prize in 1999. It is available in English as Darkness.

[e joseph]

Miss Lonelyhearts - Nathanael West
Hmmm, no thanks. Found it too cynical/pessimistic to enjoy. Maybe bad timing on my part? Totally successful as a bleak send up of 1930s society, just didn't necessarily enjoy it. Oh well.

[Daniel del Real]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/de.gif Herta Müller, Everything I Possess I Carry with Me (Atemschaukel) ****0

[sirena]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/ru.gif Demons - Fyodor Dostoevsky ***00
http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/co.gif In Evil Hour - Gabriel García Márquez ****0
http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/ru.gif The Overcoat - Nikolai Gogol *****
http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/ru.gif Diary of a Madman - Nikolai Gogol ****0
http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/ru.gif The Stationmaster - Alexander Pushkin ****0
http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/co.gif The Story of Shipwrecked Sailor - Gabriel García Márquez ***00+
http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/ru.gif Poor Folk -Fyodor Dostoevsky ****0
http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/ru.gif The Double - Fyodor Dostoevsky ***00
http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/ru.gif Novel in Nine Letters - Fyodor Dostoevsky ***00
http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/ru.gif Mr. Prokharchin - Fyodor Dostoevsky ****0
http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/ru.gif The Landlady - Fyodor Dostoevsky **000
http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/pe.gif The War of the End of the World - Mario Vargas Llosa ****0
http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/ru.gif A Weak Heart - Fyodor Dostoevsky ***00
http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/ru.gif An Honest Thief - Fyodor Dostoevsky ***00
http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/ru.gif A Christmas Tree and a Wedding - Fyodor Dostoevsky ****0
http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/ru.gif The Jealous Husband - Fyodor Dostoevsky ***00
http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/gb.gif The Red Queen - Philippa Gregory **000
http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/gb.gif David Copperfield - Charles Dickens ****0
http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/ru.gif Eugene Onegin - Alexander Pushkin *****

[Daniel del Real]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/pt.gif José Saramago, Saramago en sus Palabras (Saramago in his words) Selection and edition by Fernando Gómez Aguilera ****0

[miercuri]

Impressive little list, Sirena!
What did you think of Dostoevsky's The Double? My rating was three stars as well when I read it but I believe it sort of grew one me since then. It certainly stands out as one of his most unusual works, clearly reminiscent of Gogol. Nabokov praises it in his lectures on Russian literature, despite dismissing the rest of Dostoevsky oeuvre. I found the execution tiresome and clumsy at times though. Maybe it was partly the translator's fault as well but it gets quite repetitive.

[Stiffelio]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/ru.gif Demons - Fyodor Dostoevsky ***00
http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/co.gif In Evil Hour - Gabriel García Márquez ****0
http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/ru.gif The Overcoat - Nikolai Gogol *****
http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/ru.gif Diary of a Madman - Nikolai Gogol ****0
http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/ru.gif The Stationmaster - Alexander Pushkin ****0
http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/co.gif The Story of Shipwrecked Sailor - Gabriel García Márquez ***00+
http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/ru.gif Poor Folk -Fyodor Dostoevsky ****0
http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/ru.gif The Double - Fyodor Dostoevsky ***00
http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/ru.gif Novel in Nine Letters - Fyodor Dostoevsky ***00
http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/ru.gif Mr. Prokharchin - Fyodor Dostoevsky ****0
http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/ru.gif The Landlady - Fyodor Dostoevsky **000
http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/pe.gif The War of the End of the World - Mario Vargas Llosa ****0
http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/ru.gif A Weak Heart - Fyodor Dostoevsky ***00
http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/ru.gif An Honest Thief - Fyodor Dostoevsky ***00
http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/ru.gif A Christmas Tree and a Wedding - Fyodor Dostoevsky ****0
http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/ru.gif The Jealous Husband - Fyodor Dostoevsky ***00
http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/gb.gif The Red Queen - Philippa Gregory **000
http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/gb.gif David Copperfield - Charles Dickens ****0
http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/ru.gif Eugene Onegin - Alexander Pushkin *****

Very impressive list. You may want to add it to the 2011 Reading List thread, if indeed you read all those books just recently:

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/showthread.php/38709-WLF-Reading-List-2011

[sirena]

Impressive little list, Sirena!
What did you think of Dostoevsky's The Double? My rating was three stars as well when I read it but I believe it sort of grew one me since then. It certainly stands out as one of his most unusual works, clearly reminiscent of Gogol. Nabokov praises it in his lectures on Russian literature, despite dismissing the rest of Dostoevsky oeuvre. I found the execution tiresome and clumsy at times though. Maybe it was partly the translator's fault as well but it gets quite repetitive.

I found The Double rather untypical work of Dostoevsky and although some critics classified it as "excrucitingly painful" to read, I must say it left me a bit cold.

[sirena]

if indeed you read all those books just recently:

I read them in course of last two months.

[Bjorn]

Yoko Ogawa, The Housekeeper And The Professor (Japan) ***00

Well-written, with some nice ideas, but ultimately trite.

Yun Hung-gil, The Rain Period (South Korea) ***00

Set of three novellas. One of them is absolutely excellent, the others not quite as much, for which the translation may be partly to blame. But if you can find the title story in your language, do check it out.

Elin Wägner, Norrtullsligan (Sweden) ****0

Short and pithy 1908 satirical novel that, if you want, works both as a corollary and a riposte to Strindberg. Surprisingly up-to-date.

[Mirabell]

But if you can find the title story in your language, do check it out.


U read it in swedish?

[Rumpelstilzchen]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/ru.gif Eugene Onegin - Alexander Pushkin *****

In what language did you read it? In Russian? If not, maybe you can recommend a specific translation? Or maybe someone else can? I have been thinking about reading this book for years... but I heard so many times that this is supposed to be one of THE books where it really makes more or less no sense to read it in translation since the language is supposed to be of such high sophistication and subtlety and many aspects are necessarily lost during translation (which is of course true on some level for many or most translations). But maybe there is one translation that approximates the original better than others (English, French, German maybe)?

[Bjorn]

U read it in swedish?
Yup. As far as I can tell Yun Hung-gil hasn't been translated into English at all, but he's supposedly very popular in Korea.

ETA: I stand corrected, I was just googling the wrong romanization: It's been translated as The Rainy Spell (http://www.ktlit.com/korean-literature/the-rainy-spell-by-yun-heung-gil).

[sirena]

In what language did you read it? In Russian? If not, maybe you can recommend a specific translation? Or maybe someone else can? I have been thinking about reading this book for years... but I heard so many times that this is supposed to be one of THE books where it really makes more or less no sense to read it in translation since the language is supposed to be of such high sophistication and subtlety and many aspects are necessarily lost during translation (which is of course true on some level for many or most translations). But maybe there is one translation that approximates the original better than others (English, French, German maybe)?

I read it in Croatian and since it is Slavic language as well as Russian, I have a confidence in translation beeing more or less accurate.

[Rumpelstilzchen]

I read it in Croatian and since it is Slavic language as well as Russian, I have a confidence in translation beeing more or less accurate.

Unfortunately my knowledge of Croatian is not better than my Russian one :(

[Mirabell]

In what language did you read it? In Russian? If not, maybe you can recommend a specific translation? Or maybe someone else can? I have been thinking about reading this book for years... but I heard so many times that this is supposed to be one of THE books where it really makes more or less no sense to read it in translation since the language is supposed to be of such high sophistication and subtlety and many aspects are necessarily lost during translation (which is of course true on some level for many or most translations). But maybe there is one translation that approximates the original better than others (English, French, German maybe)?


Why not try the Nabokov one?

[Daniel del Real]

Yup. As far as I can tell Yun Hung-gil hasn't been translated into English at all, but he's supposedly very popular in Korea.

ETA: I stand corrected, I was just googling the wrong romanization: It's been translated as The Rainy Spell (http://www.ktlit.com/korean-literature/the-rainy-spell-by-yun-heung-gil).

I read this book two years ago and had the chance to wath the author presenting the book. He is a very serious man without many gestures, quiet and centered.
I found the book very good, with the first story being charming and full of magic. It was like the description of a little Corean village with the eyes of a Latin American writer inmersed in the magic realism. I agree the rest of the short stories are not as good as the first, but they have their highlights.

[Daniel del Real]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/gf.gif Boris Vian, L'Ecume des Jours **000+
It has outrageous and funny moments, but it never worked as an entire satire.

[Colonel Green]

Barney's Version by Mordecai Richler ****0

Hey, you know that one Mordecai Richler novel about the grouchy Montreal Jew? It's on my bookshelf right next to that one Toni Morrison novel about an African American woman dealing with the legacy of slavery.

This was Richler's last novel (published in 1997; in 2001 he died), the third that I've read, and its in the same universe as both of the previous Richler books that I've read; Duddy Kravitz makes a couple of cameo appearances, as well as some characters from Solomon Gursky Was Here. Richler's got an amusingly caustic humour to him, mixed sparingly with authentic-feeling sentiment. It's good stuff. He keeps pouring scorn on, well, just about everything to do with Culture.

[JTolle]

Libra -- Don DeLillo *****+

Of all DeLillo's novels I've read, his characters here are portrayed with the most warmth and humanity, probably because they're almost all interpretations of real people. But I think this novel is undoubtedly the turning-point in his writing, overall, toward more sympathetic and lifelike characters, like those I've seen in The Body Artist or Falling Man. An unbelievable novel, my favorite so far of his work. On to Mao II!

Seize the Day -- Saul Bellow ****0

What a style! Never read Bellow before and I wasn't totally blown away, but I was impressed. And I guess I was very shocked by the ending of this novel, I had imagined it would be a climactic, Carpe Diem-type moment (not without reason, I think), but Bellow really evaded the convention, and throughout gave the book a great deal more complexity than I had expected.

[Mirabell]

An unbelievable novel, my favorite so far of his work.

mine, too.

[peter_d]

ke us Mukoma Wa Ngugi - Nairobi heat **000 +
The idea and one of the central thematic questions is interesting: 'what is the (financial) value of guilt?' But the plot lacks credibility and there are too many steriotypical characters in the book for me to really enjoy it. Read some of his poetry, which I liked much better.

[Rumpelstilzchen]

Why not try the Nabokov one?

Yes, I am thinking about this one. Somewhere else in this forum someone (Eric?) mentioned that there are ~20 translations of this book into English. The Nabokov one might be the most famous one, but is it also recommandable by todays standards? As far as I understand it he took great care in having a literal translation. Unfortunately he had (?) to give up the rhyme structure completely for this. His commentary volume should definitely be read in parallel, I guess. Do you have any experience with Nabokov's version?

There was a German publication recently of the Nabokov commentary along with a new prose tranlation of the novel directly from the Russian, which was also mentioned by the Literary Saloon:
http://www.complete-review.com/saloon/archive/200912c.htm#pt5
It got mixed reviews in the newspapers as far as I understand...

[Rumpelstilzchen]

Maybe the best solution (apart from learning Russian) would be to read two translations in parallel, e.g. the Nabokov one and another one that is more faithful to the poetic aspects. Any recommendations for the latter? I just found out that there is a translation by Douglas Hofstadter. I thought this to be a joke first, but no its true, interesting...

[Colonel Green]

I read the Charles Johnston translation (the Penguin Classics one), which seemed pretty good (hard to judge, since I can't read Russian so I can't compare it against the original).

[sokale]

Have you read Pushkin's Secret Journal?
The 25th ANNIVERSARY EDITION of the most scandalous book in Russian
Literature has been just published:

Alexander S. Pushkin Secret Journal 1836-1837

ISBN 978-0-916201-28-9
see: http://www.mipco.com/english/push.html

The hero of the work, Alexander Pushkin, presents in an encapsulated form his various sexual relations, his complex thoughts on life, the nature of sin, love, and creativity, as well as the complicated path that led him to his tragic end.

The Secret Journal has incited and continues to incite the most contradictory responses reflected in three volumes of Parapushkinistika.
Now published in 25 countries (http://www.mipco.com/win/AllCovers.html), the Secret Journal deserves to be placed among the most scandalous works of Russian literature.
In spite of the international success of Pushkin's Secret Journal lasting now a quarter century, no major U.S. publisher has dared to publish it.

New French (http://www.belfond.fr) and Spanish (http://www.funambulista.net) editions of the Secret Journal are being published in 2011.

[Rumpelstilzchen]

Hey it is already April Fools' Day!!

[Rumpelstilzchen]

Here are the books I read during the last ~2 months... not many I am afraid... and I was more into the easier kind of books after surviving the many nightmares I got from reading 2666...

**000 Eating Animals, Foer
***** Unterm Rad, Hesse (reread)
****0 Knulp, Hesse
***00+ Stupeur et tremblements, Nothomb
***00+ Cosmétique de l'ennemi, Nothomb
***00 Bonjour tristesse, Sagan
***00 Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Foer

I could be that I am underestimating the Nothomb books because they seem so lighthearted...

After reading Unterm Rad again after a long time I really have to say that this book is very strong and effective and relevant, definitely a German classic, and at the same time it is very clear, easy and straightforward to read.

[sirena]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/jp.gif The Wind-up Bird Chronicle - Haruki Murakami *****

[plaugher]

Seize the Day -- Saul Bellow ****0

What a style! Never read Bellow before and I wasn't totally blown away, but I was impressed. And I guess I was very shocked by the ending of this novel, I had imagined it would be a climactic, Carpe Diem-type moment (not without reason, I think), but Bellow really evaded the convention, and throughout gave the book a great deal more complexity than I had expected.

That was the last book I read last year, and also the first Bellow I had ever read. I too had been anticipating the "righting of the ship" conclusion, so being thrown for a bit of a loop was a welcome change. A quick, enjoyable read that has encouraged me to delve deeper into Bellow. I've picked up a copy of Herzog, which I shall hopefully crack open shortly.

Afghanistan: A Short History of Its People and Politics -- Martin Ewans ***00
Good for a basic introduction on the ever-volatile history of the region through the start of the War on Terror, but was frustrated with the Anglo-centricity of the volume (but that was to be expected, given a: Ewans having been an English diplomat, and b: the likelihood of primary sources of pre-English periods being few and far between). Gave some helpful background on many of the key warlords between the Soviet and American invasions, and from use of primarily 19th-century travel memoirs, a good glimpse into the multi-faceted nature of Afghan society. But more focus seemed to be put on imperialist goals rather than the desires of the Afghan people.

Mindf*cking -- Colin McGinn ****0
Unabashedly based upon Frankfurt's On Bullsh*t, this is an essay examining the use of deception of trust and emotion to manipulate thought patterns, playing on vulnerabilities and generally messing with the heads of individuals (for personal gain) and the masses (for political gain).

[Daniel del Real]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/jp.gif Haruki Murakami, What I Talk When I Talk About Running ****0
It came with a very good timing as I am running and writing these days. Incredible this man has ran 26 marathons and an ultra maraton of 100km. No wonder why he can write 1000+ pages novels.

[Colonel Green]

Rabbit Redux by John Updike ***00

Updike's 1971 sequel to his 1960 Rabbit Run, which was his second novel and the one that put him on the map; this book was the first of three sequels (plus a novella) published over the next three decades. I thought the first novel was okay; this one is more interesting, though I still wouldn't hold it up as a favourite. If the original novel was one of the early entries in the by-now-exhausted "puncturing 1950s domesticity" genre, this one is about assessing the legacy of the 1960s on the American family structure ("Rabbit" and his wife has to be one of the most unhealthy unions I've come across in literature). Then there's Skeeter, one of the most oddly fascinating characters I've come across in a while; a sort of weird Malcolm X-meets-psychosexual mystic.

[waxwing]

The Acceptance World (1955) by Anthony Powell ****0

Novel three of A Dance to the Music of Time. Our narrator, Nick Jenkins, comes more to center stage. He has published a novel, and finally encounters love, albeit illicitly, at least by the standards of the 1920s. There is a long compelling school-reunion set piece that concludes with a scene of such inspired hilarity (I'm laughing as I type) I think it worthy of Chaplin or Keaton at their peak.

Metropole by Ferenc Karinthy (1970) **000

A professor of Linguistics boards the wrong plane in Budapest, he meant to fly to Helsinki to attend a conference. Instead he arrives in a land he has never heard of, where the inhabitants, who clog every endless street in teeming multitudes, speak a language he has never encountered, and they can speak no other. He's truly trapped, there appears to be no escape. Interesting for awhile, but I soon found it repetitive, akin to watching a man banging his head against a brick wall for a few hours.

The Mountain Lion (1947) by Jean Stafford ***00

I love novels of childhood, a time of life that is so magical, nothing after comes remotely close. And this novel does justice to that idea in highly evocative prose and well-defined characters. Only the ending is just terrible. Stafford in 1971 wrote a one page preface to a new edition in which she inexplicably reveals the ending, as if to apologize for it in advance, and nyrb retains it in their edition. If you read this novel, and it's worth reading for its many felicitous charms, I recommend avoiding the preface.

[Remora]

Andrey Biely, St. Petersburg (translated by John Cournos)

Is this the 2nd greatest novel of the 20th century as Nabokov opined? I couldn't say. I will say, however, that no one has ever written so well about a failed-suicide-by-hanging nor an assassination via knife disembowelment as Biely has.

[Mirabell]

The Mountain Lion (1947) by Jean Stafford ***00

I love novels of childhood, a time of life that is so magical, nothing after comes remotely close. And this novel does justice to that idea in highly evocative prose and well-defined characters. Only the ending is just terrible. Stafford in 1971 wrote a one page preface to a new edition in which she inexplicably reveals the ending, as if to apologize for it in advance, and nyrb retains it in their edition. If you read this novel, and it's worth reading for its many felicitous charms, I recommend avoiding the preface.

I love the whole book, incl. the ending.

[Clarissa]

Luftkrieg und Literatur - W.G.Sebald.

1999 On the Natural Theory of Destruction. London: Hamish Hamilton. (Luftkrieg und Literatur: Mit einem Essay zu Alfred Andersch) English ed. 2003

I am an unconditional admirer of WGS; he uses his initials in this book when he wishes to underline an aberration in a quoted text (he even adds !! after his initials), so I feel free also to do so.

This is an analysis of post WWII literature in Germany and is of rare objectiveness and intelligence. As always with WGS. The second essay deals with a writer who apparently was wellknown in the '50s, '60s and '70s J'accuse in its most forceful expression. A remarkable book. One that opens horizons and had me thinking, something for which I am always grateful.

[Stiffelio]

us Philip Roth: The Ghost Writer *****
I always wanted to read Roth's Zuckerman series of novels. So here I am licking my whiskers after feasting on this stellar beginnning. This is a top notch guilt-ridden, angry yet funny piece of literature.

[Bjorn]

^^ I really need to get started on the Zuckerman series some day. As with Updike's Rabbit, it feels like a pretty big undertaking, but at least everything I've read by Roth so far has been somewhere between good and utterly fantastic.

Gränsvarelser (Border Creatures), Nils Uddenberg (Sweden) ***00

Uddenberg (psychiatrist and idea historian) discusses our closest cousins, the great apes - not from a biological perspective, but how our views of them have changed over the years, from perverted imitation of God's Own Image to cuddly children of nature, and how it reflects upon us. Interesting, even if he takes a few shortcuts and seems to waffle on a few points, turning it into more of a summary than an actual analysis.

[Mirabell]

^^ I really need to get started on the Zuckerman series some day. As with Updike's Rabbit, it feels like a pretty big undertaking, but at least everything I've read by Roth so far has been somewhere between good and utterly fantastic.

Well, the Zuckerman series is much shorter than the Rabbit tetralogy, although not as consistently great. There is one volume in the American library that collects most of the Zuckerman series, called "Zuckerman Bound", which is 600 pages of deliciousness. Ghost Writer is still my favorite, though. Great, great book.

[Mirabell]

Rummelplatz, Werner Bräunig

reread this because I wanted to write a review. Maybe not, though. Book's still good. Still as flawed as you'd imagine an unpublished manuscipt to be that the author never revised for publication, and that was tampered with by well-meaning editors decades after its author's untimely death, but very much worth reading, insightful, moving, and full of energy.

Im Offenen Meer, Reinhard Jirgl

early Jirgl.

[Bjorn]

Well, the Zuckerman series is much shorter than the Rabbit tetralogy, although not as consistently great. There is one volume in the American library that collects most of the Zuckerman series, called "Zuckerman Bound", which is 600 pages of deliciousness.
Oh goody. I was honestly a bit unsure of exactly which Roth books count as the Zuckerman series - Zuckerman shows up in a bunch of other novels, doesn't he? He's the narrator of American Pastoral, for one thing... Yeah, I know, Wikipedia is my friend. Zuckerman Bound it is.

[hdw]

Mikhail Bulgakov: White Guard, translated by Marian Schwartz, publ. by Yale University Press in 2008.

This is possibly the most confusing novel I have ever read. I thought I knew all about the Whites and the Reds in Russia's civil war - well, I've read Dr. Zhivago several times and I've seen the film - but this book takes place in Ukraine, so as well as monarchists (Whites) and Bolsheviks (Reds) you also have the Ukrainian nationalist leader Petlyura with his murderous anti-Semitic hordes, not to mention Poles and Germans, all getting stuck into each other. Bulgakov assumes that his readers will know from a casual mention of a scrap of blue on a helmet or a gold star on an epaulette or some other bit of uniform, who is being talked about and which side they are on. The only thing that seems to unite the bewildering array of warring factions is contempt for their officers and commanders.

The Russian scholar Evgeny Dobrenko contributes an introduction of some 26 pages to try to prepare the reader for what is coming up. It only confused me all the more. The one thing I did take out of it was that for Bulgakov, the real hero of the novel is Kiev itself, or The City, as he calls it. Bulgakov, like many from his class in the Ukraine, saw the city as the bulwark of civilisation against the illiterate hordes of the peasantry at its gates, and of course Kiev was the ancient capital of Russia and remained a largely Russian-speaking city until modern times (it may still be, I'm not sure). The language of the streets is a mixture of Russian and Ukrainian, which the author mimics in the original, although of course you lose this in the translation.

The story moves along at a tremendous pace, the city is in turmoil as it is attacked by one enemy after another, with rumours of the approach of Petlyura and his peasant army causing terror even in the ranks of the government army. Officers are tearing the epaulettes off their uniforms and trying to fade into the crowds.

As for the family at the centre of the action, the Turbins, I gave up trying to remember who was who and who was doing what to whom. As in so many Russian novels, people are either crying hysterically or laughing hysterically or both at the same time, and that's only the men, or getting stinking drunk and threatening to shoot each other over a card game, and it's all so OTT that I speed-read the last fifty pages or so just to get shot of it. Some passages that seemed quite incomprehensible turned out to be dream sequences.

The whole confusing caboodle is well summed up at this link, which will save you having to read the damn thing for yourself.

http://www.sovlit.com/whiteguard/

I debated which flag to choose, but I think Bulgakov would come back and haunt me if I chose the Ukrainian one, so I opted for the Russian one. Good job he didn't live to see his beloved Kiev becoming Kyiv, capital of an independent (and turbulent) Ukraine.

Harry

[Colonel Green]

Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala ***00

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala surely has one of the more complicated nationality histories of authors I've read recently: born in Germany to Polish Jews, got to England while the getting was good in the 1930s, and married an Indian physician and spent a few years living there, and now resides in the US. Jhabvala is probably most known for being the silent third partner in Merchant-Ivory film productions, for which she won two screenwriting Oscars for adaptations of the works of E. M. Forster. But she's also a novelist, and, for this novel, winner of the Booker Prize. Since she won two Oscars for adapting Forster to film, it's somewhat fitting that Jhabvala's biggest novel owes a clear debt to Forster's A Passage to India. Hits a lot of familiar themes about the imperial experience on the subcontinent, contrasted with a tourist's view of India in the 1970s. Nicely written, if a bit unremarkable. The same understatement that was the signature of Jhabvala's screenplays for Merchant-Ivory is present here. The ending is a fairly effective "non-ending", which can be a bit difficult to do.

[Daniel del Real]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/jp.gif Banana Yoshimoto, Kitchen ***00



I debated which flag to choose, but I think Bulgakov would come back and haunt me if I chose the Ukrainian one, so I opted for the Russian one. Good job he didn't live to see his beloved Kiev becoming Kyiv, capital of an independent (and turbulent) Ukraine.

Harry

So you didn't want to get into trouble and chose the flag of... The Netherlands?

[hdw]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/jp.gif Banana Yoshimoto, Kitchen ***00




So you didn't want to get into trouble and chose the flag of... The Netherlands?

Ah, hell, they all look the same to me at that microscopic size. Bulgakov would probably have preferred the Netherlands flag to the Ukrainian one anyway.

Harry

[Daniel del Real]

Since I'm focusing this month in Japanese themes I selected three short novels from Mario Bellatín that have Asian theme (The first is Chinese though). This man's point of view regarding how to tell a story is always refreshing and as far I advance through his ouvre the more I can get of his perspective in literature.

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/mx.gif Mario Bellatín, La Escuela del Dolor Humano de Sechuan (Sechuan's School of Human Pain)****0
http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/mx.gif Mario Bellatín, El Jardín de la Señora Murakami (The Garden of Mrs. Murakami) ***00+
http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/mx.gif Mario Bellatín, Shiki Nagaoka: Una Nariz de Ficción (Shiki Nagaoka: A Nose of Fiction) ***00 +

[Mirabell]

Batwoman: Elegy, Greg Rucka, JH Williams III, Dave Stewart

just wanted to peek into it, but couldn't stop myself from reading it all. Superb work by everyone concerned.

[Stiffelio]

mz Mia Couto: The Last Flight of the Flamingo **000
A disappointing novel. Given all the praise I had read about this author, maybe I just picked the wrong book.

[kpjayan]

Ilustrado - Miguel Syjuco : 2008 Man Asian Literary Price winner ( the book was published in 2010, and the manuscript won the award !) by the Philippines writer. The body of a leading literary figure has been found floating in the Hudson river one morning and not convinced that this is a suicide, one of his protege ( the protagonist named after the writer, Miguel Syjuco,himself) tries to find the depth of the real story by traveling to Manila. Sort of Ultra modern novel in construction ( use of e-Mail , blog entries, interviews, part from the books of the deceased writer, part memorial , parts notes by another omnipresent narrator, diary entries ) looking at the 150 years of the political and social histpry of the upper middle class ( ilustrados) of Philippines. Good effort, good style of writing, but lacks depth and conviction.. ***00

[Bjorn]

Hans Fallada, Little Man, What Now? *****

Wow. Just wow. I'd been avoiding this book for a few years due to the rather silly Swedish title (What's Going To Happen To The Pinnebergs?) but... wow.

[Clarissa]

Hans Fallada, Little Man, What Now? ***** The English title is a translation of the German Kleiner Mann - was nun? I would never have read it if it had the Swedish title!

I thought this much better than his current 'bestseller' Every Man dies Alone.

[Mirabell]

Hans Fallada, Little Man, What Now? ***** The English title is a translation of the German Kleiner Mann - was nun? I would never have read it if it had the Swedish title!

I thought this much better than his current 'bestseller' Every Man dies Alone.

That's because it is much better. It's also his best novel by far.

[Daniel del Real]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/mx.gif Mario Bellatín, La Mirada del Pájaro Transparente/Bola Negra ****0

[JTolle]

How Far Can You Go? -- David Lodge ****0-

Speaking of terrible titles, I refuse to call this hilarious novel by its vague and awful U.S. Edition title: Souls and Bodies.

Men in the Off Hours -- Anne Carson (reread)

I cannot get over Carson. This is one of my favorites, probably vying with Autobiography of Red as the best of her books I've read.

[Clarissa]

David Grossman - The Book of Intimate Grammar

Having read his latest novel, To the End of the Land, and having found it exceptional, I decided to read others from Grossman. Neither The Smile of the Lamb nor The Book of Intimate Grammar were nearly as good. I had to force myself to get through The Book of Intimate Grammar and nearly gave up on it. Longwinded, repetitive and a subect (the inner turmoil of a preadolescent boy) that just didn't cut it with me.

[Colonel Green]

Kristin Lavransdatter I: The Wreath by Sigrid Undset ****0

First volume of Undset's most famous trilogy, the work that secured her the Nobel (only the third woman to earn the prize). It's about the romantic tribulations of a teenage girl in 14th century Norway; the setup is pretty standard, even considering that this was written 90 years ago (engaged by her parents to one guy, she falls in love with another, he may or may not be trustworthy, etc.), but the execution is quite intelligent. For instance, Kristin's father Lavrans, who seems cut from the "indulgent period piece dad" archtype; and he's indeed pretty nice, but he has more edges to him than that, as you'd expect from somebody in this time.

[errequatro]

In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway ***00

Volume of vignettes and short stories. The overall effect is very good and it was quite clever of Hemingway to spread the stories geographically and temporarly. A few stories, specially the ones where Nick Adams is the protagonist, are really worth reading. Some, though, could only provoke a yawn. Good early Hemingway.

[Mirabell]

David Grossman - The Book of Intimate Grammar

Having read his latest novel, To the End of the Land, and having found it exceptional, I decided to read others from Grossman. Neither The Smile of the Lamb nor The Book of Intimate Grammar were nearly as good. I had to force myself to get through The Book of Intimate Grammar and nearly gave up on it. Longwinded, repetitive and a subect (the inner turmoil of a preadolescent boy) that just didn't cut it with me.


haven't read any of his books yet. People keep recommending See under: Love and Be My Knife (and you, of course, recommended To The End of the Land), but I browsed the ...Knife book twice in the bookshop and wasn't enticed enough, so curiously, that was where I stopped.

[Rumpelstilzchen]

***00+ Tschick, Wolfgang Herrndorf: Funny and amusing road trip of two teenagers through eastern Germany.

[sirena]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/jp.gif The Samurai - Shusaku Endo ***00+

[Stiffelio]

us Philip Roth: Zuckerman Unbound *****
The second instalment in the Zuckerman series. Nathan Zuck has made it big with his latest book and tries to cope with success, becoming rather paranoid about it. Roth's scalpel pen, alternating funny and sad moments, probes deeply into Nathan's complex relationship with his family, his father in particular, for apparently 'spilling the beans' on matters that demeaned his humble origins and the Jewish community he belongs to, and the unexpected consequences that writing fiction may bring upon the readers. This is great literarture. Almost as good as The Ghost Writer.

[Caodang]

José Saramago: Blindness *****

[peter_d]

Naguib Mahfouz - Palace of Desire ****0
There had been some time between reading volume 1 and 2 of this triology. Meeting with the characters again felt like coming home...

[Mirabell]

The Prodigal, Derek Walcott

Sweet Tooth: Out of the deep Woods, Jeff Lemire

Sweet Tooth: In Captivity, Jeff Lemire

The Arrival, Shaun Tan

[e joseph]

Beloved - Toni Morrison
The first of her books I've read; fantastic writing but the story I wasn't 100% into. Still though, her writing...

[JTolle]

The Man Who Was Thursday -- G.K. Chesterton ****0-

The end is pretty heavy-handed despite all its strange contortions, I mean, 'Can ye drink of the cup that I drink of?', you really can't escape that glaring MESSAGE. And all the parallels to Don Quixote only make Don Quixote seem an even better novel. But, it's a great ridiculous romp of a read, and other than the end, the allegory does not state itself in too plain terms. Good fun.

[destined2b]

Queen Victoria Demon Hunter

Engaging and nicely written, it's definitely fiction that offers you a different look at England's Queen Victoria.

[Daniel del Real]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/jp.gif Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 (books 1 & 2)

[Clarissa]

Arno Geiger - Der alte König in seinem Exil Geiger was awarded the Friedrich Hölderlin Prize for this. It is a depressing read about the author's father's slow descent into Alzheimer's. It is well written, sometimes moving, but grim. Although there are some funny moment, all in all, I drew the conclusion that I would prefer to go sooner rather than later.

[waxwing]

At Aunt Molly's (1957) by Anthony Powell

Novel 4 of A Dance to the Music of Time. Given the large cast, the paucity of plot and the two to three year gap between publication of each novel, I can see why Dance may have been underappreciated in its time. I'm finding it a great reading experience.

The Maias (1888) by Eca de Queiros ***00

Superbly translated by Margaret Jull Costa, it's compulsively readable with some great satirical set-pieces, concerning the idle and dissolute lives of the young, spoiled super-rich males, and the married women they pursue, of 19th century Portugal. Unfortunately, an icky, heavy incest theme lingers over the second half of this long novel, and I thought it finally crumbled under the weight.

Next (2010) by James Hynes **000

Another white middle-aged male malaise genre novel, every paragraph overflowing with hip contemporary references, then using (I might say abusing) the ultimate contemporary reference, 9/11, for it's ending.

[Loki]

Travesuras de la niña mala (The Bad Girl), by Mario Vargas Llosa. ***00+

A well-written novel, interesting for many (personal) reasons, but not so good up to the end. I'll write something more later, in the other thread.

[waxwing]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/jp.gif Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 (books 1 & 2)

I'm really curious as to your thoughts on this.

[JTolle]

Glass, Irony and God -- Anne Carson *****-
The Clerk's Tale -- Spencer Reece ****0+

Reece's first collection, and despite a few weak poems, an incredibly well-crafted and totally mature work. I believe these may be the initial stirrings of a great American poet.

Akira Vol 1 -- Katsuhiro Otomo

"The finest work of graphic fiction"? We'll see, but I wouldn't be surprised.

[kpjayan]

All Souls - Javier Marias : ***00+

[Mirabell]

a great American poet.

Really? I am not convinced by this


Spencer Reece: The Clerk's Tale


I am thirty-three and working in an expensive clothier,
selling suits to men I call "Sir."
These men are muscled, groomed and cropped--
with wives and families that grow exponentially.
Mostly I talk of rep ties and bow ties,
of full-Windsor knots and half-Windsor knots,
of tattersall, French cuff, and English spread collars,
of foulards, neats, and internationals,
of pincord, houndstooth, nailhead, and sharkskin.
I often wear a blue pin-striped suit.
My hair recedes and is going gray at the temples.
On my cheeks there are a few pimples.
For my terrible eyesight, horn-rimmed spectacles.
One of my fellow-workers is an old homosexual
who works hard and wears bracelets with jewels.
No one can rival his commission checks.
On his break he smokes a Benson & Hedges cigarette,
puffing expectantly as a Hollywood starlet.
He has carefully applied a layer of Clinique bronzer
to enhance the tan on his face and neck.
His hair is gone except for a few strands
which are combed across his scalp.
He examines his manicured lacquered nails.
I admire his studied attention to details:
his tie stuck to his shirt with masking tape,
his teeth capped, his breath mint in place.
The old homosexual and I laugh in the back
over a coarse joke involving an octopus.
Our banter is staccato, staged and close
like those "Spanish Dances" by Granados.
I sometimes feel we are in a musical--
gossiping backstage between our numbers.
He drags deeply on his cigarette.
Most of his life is over.
Often he refers to himself as "an old faggot."
He does this bemusedly, yet timidly.
I know why he does this.
He does this because his acceptance is finally complete--
and complete acceptance is always
bittersweet. Our hours are long. Our backs bent.
We are more gracious than English royalty.
We dart amongst the aisles tall as hedgerows.
Watch us face into the merchandise.
How we set up and take apart mannequins
as if we were performing autopsies.
A naked body, without pretense, is of no use.
It grows late.
I hear the front metal gate close down.
We begin folding the ties correctly according to color.
The shirts--Oxfords, broadcloths, pinpoints--
must be sized, stacked, or rehashed.
The old homosexual removes his right shoe,
allowing his gigantic bunion to swell.
There is the sound of cash being counted--
coins clinking, bills swishing, numbers whispered--
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. . .
We are changed when the transactions are done--
older, dirtier, dwarfed.
A few late customers gawk in at us.
We say nothing. Our silence will not be breached.
The lights go off, one by one--
the dressing room lights, the mirror lights.
Then it is very late. How late? Eleven?
We move to the gate. It goes up.
The gate's grating checkers our cheeks.
This is the Mall of America.
The light is bright and artificial,
yet not dissimilar to that found in a Gothic cathedral.
You must travel down the long hallways to the exits
before you encounter natural light.
One final formality: the manager checks out bags.
The old homosexual reaches into his over-the-shoulder leather bag--
the one he bought on his European travels
with his companion of many years.
He finds a stick of lip balm and applies it to his lips
liberally, as if shellacking them.
Then he inserts one last breath mint
and offers one to me. The gesture is fraternal
and occurs between us many times.
At last, we bid each other good night.
I watch him fade into the many-tiered parking lot,
where the thousands of cars have come
and are now gone. This is how our day ends.
This is how our day always ends.
Sometimes snow falls like rice.
See us take to our dimly lit exits,
disappearing into the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul;
Minneapolis is sleek and St. Paul,
named after the man who had to be shown,
is smaller, older, and somewhat withdrawn.
Behind us, the moon pauses over the vast egg-like dome of the mall.
See us loosening our ties among you.
We are alone.
There is no longer any need to express ourselves.

[Loki]

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu- Carmilla. ****0-

[JTolle]

"The Clerk's Tale" is how he gets thrown in people's faces, and although that's not one of the few really weak poems (I think there's around 5 poems that should have just been taken out), it's not nearly the best.

From "Ghazals for Spring"


vi


The high school teasing is gone--the woofs, the oinks--only these unfenced vistas
to cradle where each morning mouths are propped open like old barn windows.

Lawns blush, here and there amongst the forest the lost spangles of dawn revelers.
Always after darkness, the applause, the paparazzi.

In "The Berlin Stories", the woeful pompom sounds of war hew and blast the city's edges
as Christopher shivers, alone, under the stars, the crazy, abiding, ceaseless stars.

Churches pitch, rock, and eddy, small sailboats. In the town's chinks,
lovers crouch and hoo, squeezing and popping their nectars.

The oak leaf? A mystery novel the caterpillar reads with a microscope.
Elsewhere grasshoppers answer multiple-choice questions until they die.

Uh-huh. somewhere there exists someone with luxurious girth on a bed
with lace trimming who is ready to torpedo your entire life. Ready your suitcases.

Dear Diary, Tonight the world was no longer awash with ash,
instead the sun lolled longer, peeling kisses from her lips like orange rinds.

[Elie]

Graham Greene - Brighton Rock

Very enjoyable, quick read. Am now going to read the other 4 books of his I've managed to accumulate - must be a record for a writer whom I was previously unfamiliar with..

[Clarissa]

Rose Tremain - Trespass

Found this disappointing after all the good reviews but then I was not that impressed by her previous bestseller The Road Home, which also received glowing reviews. Yes, they are well written by today's criteria and Tremain is most professional in her story telling but when I compare Trespass to Asta's Book by Barbara Vine (aka Ruth Rendell), Tremain is found wanting. While reading Trespass, I was impressed by her portrayal of the French village in the Cévennes but, for the rest, it came under my category of better airport lit. An easy read when one is in bed with 'flu'. Her use of commas every which way pulled me up short a number of times - most irritating. Are there no editors anymore?**

Colm Toibin - Brooklyn Now this was something else. Beautiful in the writing, in the atmosphere, in the emotions. I loved it. I found extraordinary the way Toibin managed the POV so well. Highly recommended****

[Mirabell]

wow you've been reading a lot lately!

[Peeping Tom]

Popular Hits of the Showa Era by Ryu Murakami (no relation to Haruki). This is an odd little novel, a scathing satire of contemporary Japan, comic bookish, and, like most of Murakami’s works, very violent. But it is also funny and somewhat mesmerizing. Not his best, but I still liked it. ****0

[Mirabell]

Tekkonkinkreet, Taiyo Matsumoto (trans. Lillian Olsen)

[learna]

The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse.

****0

[Daniel del Real]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/pt.gif José Saramago, Objecto Cuase (Quasi Object) short stories ***00



I'm really curious as to your thoughts on this.

It's hard to make a review of an unfinished book, same reason why I don't rate it yet. I'll have to wait til October to complete reading this gigantic novel.

[Colonel Green]

The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie ****0

Finally, a book to kill for!

In a way, I'm surprised that this was so controversial, because, like a lot of modern capital-L Literature, it's got a moderately rambling structure and shies away from really distilling its points clearly. Nonetheless, an interesting read, and I like Rushdie's prose style; I think I probably like this more than Midnight's Children. You can also see that the controversy has enlarged the importance of certain sequences in the public imagination, whereas the novel itself is more about the framing parts about the British/Indian immigrant experience.

[Loki]

Lady Windermere's Fan- Oscar Wilde ****0
A great play, although not as good as The importance of Being Ernest. The plot was enjoyable and the dialogue very entertaining.

A Woman of No Importance- Oscar Wilde ****0
I was a bit doubtful at first, as nothing really happens in the first act. In the first act there is "just" some witty dialogue, and the mentioning of the "woman of no importance". Then the actual plot starts, although there are always a lot of characters talking (it took me a while to get who were the main characters!). Wilde here reveals as a great playwright, not just for his dialogue, but for how he builds up the plot, how he decides to reveal things.
Apart from the protagonists, there are some remarkable characters, like Sir John, the "silent" character in the play (in the other play the "silent" character was the Duchess's daughter), but the whole situation in which he's concerned is quite funny. Speaking of funny things, the dialogue made me laugh hard at times.

[Hemmo]

Just finished the Penguin Classics translation of Aristophanes' The Archanians, The Clouds and Lysistrata. Its one of those translations where they decide to "update" the language so you get sentences like: "hey Lysistrata, you're really bugging me...". This irritated at first but I got used to it. The same applies to the "comedy" - tastes change but I was surprised by how slapstick and crude it was. The first two plays passed me by: but Lysistrata is astonishing - the story of Greek women who go on a sex strike in order to get their men to see sense and stop going to war...completely different from anything I've read from that or any other era.

[Liam]

Lysistrata is astonishing - the story of Greek women who go on a sex strike in order to get their men to see sense and stop going to warThe play also contains a humorous (if thoroughly homophobic) remark on the part of one Athenian councilman that if "our men don't reconcile with their wives they will start humping each other." As if this would be a BAD thing??? :rolleyes: [Sigh]. What can I say, one man's nightmare is another man's wetdream.

completely different from anything I've read from that or any other era.You need to read more medieval literature, my friend, :).


L.

[sirena]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/pe.gif Conversation in the Cathedral - Mario Vargas Llosa ***00

[Colonel Green]

Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town by Stephen Leacock ***00

Enjoyable comic take on small-town life that, notwithstanding some period references, wouldn't need to change much to apply now, a century after its original publication.

Anabasis by St-John Perse *0000

Ah, modern poetry.

[Clarissa]

The Hare with Amber Eyes - Edmund de Waal *****

Extraordinary book. Outstanding. Highly recommended.

[JTolle]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/pe.gif Conversation in the Cathedral - Mario Vargas Llosa ***00

Give some details, this is supposed to be a phenomenal novel by all accounts.



Anabasis by St-John Perse *0000

Ah, modern poetry.

Never read Perse, but he's a Nobel Laureate, why was this so bad?

[Mirabell]

Never read Perse, but he's a Nobel Laureate, why was this so bad?


It isn't. Here's a bit from Anabase, if you're interested

http://www.entretemps.asso.fr/Badiou/Anabase.pdf

[Colonel Green]

Never read Perse, but he's a Nobel Laureate, why was this so bad?I intensely dislike most modern poetry styles (which, in general, I find tend to eschew any sense of fun with language or strong narrative; I particularly dislike confessional poetry, though this isn't an example of that), so I'm probably not the best reference for these sorts of things in general.

Anabasis is an interesting poem since it's written by one Nobel Laureate and translated by another (T. S. Eliot) -- though I'm not generally a big fan of Eliot's poetry either. My favourite of his is "The Journey of the Magi" (and Practical Cats is enjoyable fluff, one where you can at least get the sense he's enjoying the language); conversely, his most celebrated contribution is "The Waste Land", which I think is terrible both on its own and in its influence ("The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", his other big one, I like better).

[Loki]

Lewis Carrol-Alice's Adventures in Wonderland ****0


Lewis Carroll-Through the Looking Glass ***00+

[Manuel76]

Désert- J.M.G. Le Clézio **000+
Mediocre novel. Le Clézio style is swollen, repetitive, boring. He needs 70 pages to say what any honest writer would need 5 or 6. This seems to be about a too loving girl and how she finds love in anything and anybody and survives in a perhaps a not that lovable environment. Tha character is awful, and I could only hate both character and writer for such a waste of time and money, page after page is like: she loves the sea, she loves the dunes, the ships, the simple and humble people who surrounds her, she loves the breezes, and again the dunes, and the sea...

Sabbath's Theatre- Philip Roth *****
Wonderful novel in two parts: in the first one Sabbath is obsessed with pervert sex, past and sometimes death; in the second time he's obsessed with death, past and sometimes pervert sex. Wicked sense of humour. First part is disgusting and funny, second is disgusting and depressing. Wonderful prose writing, dense and rich as anything by Pynchon or Nabokov (but perhaps without such a distinct personality), and same sense of tragedy. But not a book you want to read twice, even with all the laughs. Only thing I disliked is Roth's predilection ( or perhaps Sabbath's) for paradox and those clever sentences which seem to mean more than they do.

Canciones- García Lorca *****+

Less known than Romancero Gitano and from that same period, an even more fascinating work. Both books revive two traditional genres: Cancionero and Romancero, more lyrical the first one, more narrative the second. The first one suits best, I think, Lorca's musicianship and capacity for inexhaustible images. One example from the almost 100 songs, directly from traditional poetry and Góngora:

La tarde equivocada
se vistió de frío.

Detrás de los cristales
turbios, todos los niños,
ven convertirse en pájaros
un árbol amarillo.

La tarde está tendida
a lo largo del río.
Y un rubor de manzana
tiembla en los tejadillos.

(I tried to translate it...imposible)

[sirena]

Give some details, this is supposed to be a phenomenal novel by all accounts.

As the whole, I find it, tremendously boring. The worst Vargas Llosa's novel that I've read so far.
The most "painful" thing was caracters' conversation structure (if I can call it like that). For example, we have two couples of people having a conversation in different times and different places. Let's call it AB and CD. The conversations look like this:
A: talking
C: talking
B: answering
D: answering, asking
A: ....
and so on. Do you get the picture?

The characters are, like, half-done. Why they are doing things that they're doing?! The motivation factor?!
And as for the picture of Peru's society of the time, sorry, I didn't find it. All the characters seem to be more of "border types".

[Manuel76]

As the whole, I find it, tremendously boring. The worst Vargas Llosa's novel that I've read so far.
The most "painful" thing was caracters' conversation structure (if I can call it like that). For example, we have two couples of people having a conversation in different times and different places. Let's call it AB and CD. The conversations look like this:
A: talking
C: talking
B: answering
D: answering, asking
A: ....
and so on. Do you get the picture?

The characters are, like, half-done. Why they are doing things that they're doing?! The motivation factor?!
And as for the picture of Peru's society of the time, sorry, I didn't find it. All the characters seem to be more of "border types".

Sirena, I completely disagree, not only one of my favorite books but without any doubt Vargas Llosa's best novel (way ahead of all the rest, with the only possible exception of La casa verde, technically similar in many ways but which lacks its emotional impact)

The structure in dialogues is of course deliberate and one of its greatest ideas: dialogues and facts atracted by their most hidden and important affinities, and not by simple chronological order. That first conversation in the pub is the origin of the whole book. Of course it's a complex method but I found it completely satisfying.

As in a poem a word can awake in our sensibility lots of responses, every dialogue said, every action can awake in the novel's discourse (or in the omniscient narrator's mind, so different here from the XIX classical narrator) lots of connections, so reflect them simultaneously or as they are aroused can be a more powerful way of representation than just chronological order.

I found the picture of that society as fascinating as Balzac's Paris, and the characters completely moving and unforgettable: can anyone imagine a more moving relationship than that of Zavalita and his father? isn't Zavalita's clearly sadomasoquism and need for selfpunishment convincing?

Ambrosio, Amalia, Hortensia, Queta, Santiago's family, his communist friends in University and perhaps above all his charming wife (a wonderful character who appears only in the first pages and the last part of the book), all of them are completely unforgetable.

[sirena]

Sirena, I completely disagree, not only one of my favorite books but without any doubt Vargas Llosa's best novel (way ahead of all the rest, with the only possible exception of La casa verde, technically similar in many ways but which lacks its emotional impact)

The structure in dialogues is of course deliberate and one of its greatest ideas: dialogues and facts atracted by their most hidden and important affinities, and not by simple chronological order. That first conversation in the pub is the origin of the whole book. Of course it's a complex method but I found it completely satisfying.

As in a poem a word can awake in our sensibility lots of responses, every dialogue said, every action can awake in the novel's discourse (or in the omniscient narrator's mind, so different here from the XIX classical narrator) lots of connections, so reflect them simultaneously or as they are aroused can be a more powerful way of representation than just chronological order.

I found the picture of that society as fascinating as Balzac's Paris, and the characters completely moving and unforgettable: can anyone imagine a more moving relationship than that of Zavalita and his father? isn't Zavalita's clearly sadomasoquism and need for selfpunishment convincing?

Ambrosio, Amalia, Hortensia, Queta, Santiago's family, his communist friends in University and perhaps above all his charming wife (a wonderful character who appears only in the first pages and the last part of the book), all of them are completely unforgetable.

Really?! I'd exchange this one for The Feast of the Goat anytime. :D

[johnw1]

Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh ****0

Very moving. It reminds me in some ways of The Great Gatsby in its lyrical, bitter-sweet style and the idealistic, youthful hopefulness that essentially fails. This has some beautiful passages - this is one of my favourite lines and it sums up the mood well:

"But I was in search of love in those days, and I went full of curiosity and the faint, unrecognised apprehension that here, at last, I should find that low door in the wall, which others, I knew, had found before me, which opened on an enclosed and enchanted garden, which was somewhere, not overlooked by any window, in the heart of that grey city."

[Rumpelstilzchen]

**000 Verbrechen, Ferdinand von Schirach
**000 Bengal Nights, Mircea Eliade
*0000 It Does Not Die, Maitreyi Devi

[Clarissa]

Primo Levi - The Magic Paint. Weird and wonderful. Only 59 pages of very short stories. A gem.

[Manuel76]

Really?! I'd exchange this one for The Feast of the Goat anytime. :D

well...I'm sure he wouldn't :)

[Clarissa]

David Nicholls - One Day lightweight bittersweet pleasant read

[sirena]

well...I'm sure he wouldn't :)

Who is he? Mario Vargas Llosa? Of course, to a writer his/her novels are like his/her children! ;)

[kpjayan]

I am with Manuel here. Conversation in the Cathedral is one of the best novels by Llosa. Even better than Feast of the Goat :)

[SlowRain]

Graham Greene - Brighton Rock

Very enjoyable, quick read. Am now going to read the other 4 books of his I've managed to accumulate - must be a record for a writer whom I was previously unfamiliar with..
Graham Greene is one of my favorite writers. What are the other four?

[Clarissa]

Maggie O'Farrell - The hand that first held mine
This won the Costa Book Award 1910.
I quote the Literary Review
Genuinely unputdownable and it's true. Beautifully written, deeply moving.

[Daniel del Real]

Désert- J.M.G. Le Clézio **000+
Mediocre novel. Le Clézio style is swollen, repetitive, boring. He needs 70 pages to say what any honest writer would need 5 or 6. This seems to be about a too loving girl and how she finds love in anything and anybody and survives in a perhaps a not that lovable environment. Tha character is awful, and I could only hate both character and writer for such a waste of time and money, page after page is like: she loves the sea, she loves the dunes, the ships, the simple and humble people who surrounds her, she loves the breezes, and again the dunes, and the sea...


No, don't say that, those are discouraging words for a reader who is about to start the same novel you disliked. I bought Désert last December and I scheduled it to read it in March. However it's not the first book I've read from Le Clézio and frankly I haven't find that great writer the Nobel Academy describes. The Golden Fish was good (nothing impressing either) but after that Deluge and Quarantaine were tediously boring and unbearable at times.
This will be my final attempt to Le Clezió with his supposed best novel so far, although your devastating words do not give me much hope.


Canciones- García Lorca *****+

Less known than Romancero Gitano and from that same period, an even more fascinating work. Both books revive two traditional genres: Cancionero and Romancero, more lyrical the first one, more narrative the second. The first one suits best, I think, Lorca's musicianship and capacity for inexhaustible images. One example from the almost 100 songs, directly from traditional poetry and Góngora:

La tarde equivocada
se vistió de frío.

Detrás de los cristales
turbios, todos los niños,
ven convertirse en pájaros
un árbol amarillo.

La tarde está tendida
a lo largo del río.
Y un rubor de manzana
tiembla en los tejadillos.

(I tried to translate it...imposible)

On Garcia Lorca I agree with you it's not easy to translate that poem, its beautifully constructed and with such strenght in its imagery that you need a true effort to try.
I've read Romancero Gitano and I absolutely loved it. That was a few years ago. Right away, I want to get Un Poeta en Nueva York. I'm curious about this book. Have you read it?

[Daniel del Real]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/es.gif Javier Cercas, Soldados de Salamina (Soldiers of Salamis) ****0
A very solid novel built on with a very interesting technique of the "how to create a novel" type and how reality and casualty gets together to compliment a story, eitheir it's fiction or non fiction. Totally recommended.

[Mirabell]

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/images/flags/es.gif Javier Cercas, Soldados de Salamina (Soldiers of Salamis) ****0
A very solid novel built on with a very interesting technique of the "how to create a novel" type and how reality and casualty gets together to compliment a story, eitheir it's fiction or non fiction. Totally recommended.

It is a pretty good book. we have a thread on it, I think

[Elie]

Graham Greene is one of my favorite writers. What are the other four?

In this order: The Quiet American, The Power And The Glory, The Heart Of The Matter (which I am mid way through now) and Our Man In Havana.

Most impressed with The Power And The Glory so far though I'm very much enjoying the current read as well.

[Colonel Green]

I've read Brighton Rock and The Heart of the Matter, I liked them both; mean to read more of his stuff later.

[SlowRain]

Good to know there are a few other Greene fans on here. My favorite is The Heart of the Matter, followed by The Quiet American, The End of the Affair, The Power and the Glory, A Burnt-out Case, The Comedians, and The Hounourary Cosnul. I'm not the biggest fan of his earlier thrillers, but Stambul Train/Orient Express was okay.

[JTolle]

Nice to see some others appreciating Greene right now. Finished The Power and the Glory recently and was floored by that first foray into his work. Started The End of the Afrair literally today and it's official: I'm in love.

[Clarissa]

Graham Greene - why did he never get the Nobel Prize for literature???

[Mirabell]

Graham Greene - why did he never get the Nobel Prize for literature???


the answer is, as it always is: because others did, and then he died. It's the same for every great writer not winning the prize. Whether it's Greene or Hofmannsthal or Bernhard or the very recently deceased Arnošt Lustig. Everyone deserved it, but there have been only 110 prizes so far in over a century of great writers.

[Clarissa]

Can't say that all those who did win it were 'great writers'...

[learna]

I have just looked through the Russian Wikipedia and read that Graham Greene was a candidate for the Noble Prize several times but because of critics did not get it (Artur Lundkvist was one of the most prejudiced).

Vera.

[Mirabell]

Can't say that all those who did win it were 'great writers'...

well, the odd choices are by far in the minority, I think and mostly in the first half of the century. Sully Prudhomme, for example. Or Paul Heyse and Rudolf Eucken.