One of the beauty of blogging for six plus years is I have a good selection of reviews to look back on so today as others have I ‘ve decide to look back on five books from the archives
A young boy discovers there is more to his mother dying , when he discovers a mp3 file of her talking .She manage to capture a good child narrator in this book .A great way of how we view the world when young and what happpens when that falls apart .
Now off to Africa and a small piece of history told in this book ,Raj and David meet after David arrives with his family of to try and get to Palenstine after the second world war . One first from Maclehose press worth looking back on .
Now A real early review on the blog is this tale of dreams and migration , seems more fitting now than it did six years ago . One boy follows his football dream but it goes wrong .With recent scenes in France this is a must read african novel .
Off to North africa and the late Assia Djebar , a collection of stories that are about the modern role of women in Algeria and North Africa and after the recent arab springs is an interesting look at the past for woman and what could change in the future .
The story of a woman that sees to the dying a sort of reverse midwife for the dying .As she face up to her job and rural life in general .
Now also worth noting my good friend Susan from Istros books has a sale on via Impress books of a number of the Female writers they have published in the last few years such as Exile a wonderful short story collection from this year
Well I decide today to go back and reread the first and second of what is now a quartet of books by the mysterious Italian writer Elena Ferrante , yes reread as I read the first book in the set around the time it came out as I was sent the proof , but for me it was ok , I frankly didn’t get the hype from others (although always weary of hype ).Now was it fact that I maybe read it at the wrong time ? well now I a deep in a month of mainly female writers it may help as I do mainly read male writers , so maybe the book may conect more as I have read more female voices this last three weeks than in the last five years .Another thought is maybe she just isn’t the writer for me we can’t like every writer cane we ? well a second crack of the whip may help me decide .I remember thinking that she had set the scene well but at time of the first reading I maybe did race through it as it was one I had maybe thought I would like , did I set my level to high in that case .Anyway for me as a reader and fan of translated fiction I hate to not be getting one of the big stars of translated fiction at the moment , so lets hope it is second time round for me .As this evening I dive into My brilliant friend
What did you like about Ferrante , maybe if I see what others like it may help me get in to it ?
Yesterday saw Amanda and I eighth wedding anniversary , so as I am very hard to buy for (other than books that is even then I want to know ),I choose a book for my gift from my beloved wife . I do sometimes get tempt by a bit of book hype and this book for me has been in my twitter feed most of the year and a few of the people saying they like it like Katya Taylor who’s opinion matters to me .A little life is the second novel by Hanya Yanagihara her first people in the tree was one I saw mentioned ,a lot a couple of years ago when it came out , as it had taken her twenty years to write .But in the 18 months after that she managed to write this 760 page epic , it’s almost like once the floodgate had open she couldn’t stop .A little life is a story of four friends growing up all with arty jobs after college , it follows the end of the college lives and the decades that follow one of the four friends Jude has a dark secret in his past it seems . The book has already made the booker longlist .Not sure when I will get to it if it makes booker shortlist I think I will get to it soon ,as I hear it is a real page turner once you get into it .
So it’s summer again and what do you drink with your books in the summer , the first picture is a cocktail Amanda and I had last summer my Mojoito is maybe a perfect summer drink . I love short Novellas , like I said in yesterdays post for The red collar that was a perfect summer book for me that books is one between 120 and 180 pages in length not too deep and not too light (I’m not a beach read fan ) .So for you in those sunny evenings is it a Cocktail , beer , wine or just spirts you have next to the pile of books you are reading ? What books are you drawn to in the summer ?
I fetched this book from the library the other day , I had wanted to wait till I could buy it but saw it in the Library and just couldn’t wait .Death and Mr Pickwick is a historic novel about the writing of Charles Dickens novel and the characters around the book that inspired Dickens or Boz and the guy Robert Seymour that did the illustrations for the original books . He later killed himself . So I am preparing to dive into both this and the original book that was the starting point for the book , this and Stephen Jarvis finding out about Robert Seymour’s life and using him as one of four main characters in this epic book Death and mr Pickwick is 800 pages long .I will also be reading my step grandfather edition of The Pickwick papers , which is the same edition I read many years ago on a holiday at my dads in my teens . So in twenty-five years , will the book seem different .I think over that quarter of a century it maybe has fallen down the ranks of Dickens novels maybe as it hasn’t had a new tv or film version since 1985 , which I watch at the time which made me read the book at the time , this version appears to be online and the 1952 film as well on you tube both worth watching .The best film is the 1952 one , in which the main character is well portrayed by James Hayter , this film also lead to the book being a huge hit in Russia at the time , as the film was the first british film to be shown in Russia after world war two . So at end of this month it will be all Pickwick here as I try to read both books .
Have you read either book ? I will be bringing review of both at some point next month !
Well its a double hit this week of Irish writer days today is the 150th annivesary of the birth of William Butler Yeats .I first came across Yeats at school he is one of the few Poets I have actually like from reading the first poem by him which I was The Magi . I brought the above copy about twenty years ago and have read it few many times .This collection was sorted and put together by Yeats himself so I found it maybe a choice of what he considered his best work and for me that is good enough my copy came out in 1938 .Then later in the week we have this years Bloomsday .
The Stolen Child
WHERE dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water rats;
There we’ve hid our faery vats,
Full of berrys
And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.
Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim gray sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.
I choose the first two verses of Stolen child as it ties in with a song version of the poem from the Waterboys . It is also worth checking out there album of songs from his poems a n appointment with Mr Yeats .
Just a perfect day Drink Sangria in the park And then later When it gets dark, we go home
Just a perfect day Feed animals in the zoo Then later A movie, too, and then home
Oh, it’s such a perfect day I’m glad I spent it with you Oh, such a perfect day You just keep me hanging on You just keep me hanging on
I choose perfect day by Lou Reed as it mix part of what is in this book there isn’t a perfect day and this wasn’t one but seemed it .
I wonder if I am the only one that tends to go the other way in times of trouble and read the tougher books to read when in times of trouble . So I found myself picking up my second novel to read by Krasznahorkai , the other week of course I had been remind I has it when he won the recent man booker international award .Krasznahorkai is best known for Satantango which is the other book by him I have read . He has since the fall of the soviet bloc traveled the world hence this novel which is written 20 plus years after Satantango is set mainly in japan but also in various places and times . He has spent the last decade in both Japan and China .
Everything around it moves , as if just this one time and one time only , as if the message of Heraclitus has arrived here though some deep current , from a distance of an entire universe in spite of all the senseless obstacles , because the water moves .
The opening lines .
The premise of Seiobo there below is the Japanese goddess once every 3000 years has a peach tree in her garden that bares fruit and this fruit gives who ever eats it immortality . Now she decides to search for perfection on the earth thus setting up the sequences of stories that follow in the book as we see her follow various artist actors and such .Trying to find what is perfection but is perfection what it seems , is that great actor the face every one sees when he acts , or is he different behind the scenes ? How do you get the perfect colour for that picture .What makes great art and is their great art with great artist , do great artist make great art .Each story leads some how in some way to the next as we follow Seiobo on her quest .
Well as you see as ever something seems to escape me in Krasznahorkai writing but l, I can put my finger on it here for me as a reader it is time . This is like me being given Boy and Actung baby by u2 or even Tender prey and push the sky away by Nick cave . Now these are all great records but can you list to Boy then actung baby ? it is like I have broken the sequence as with this book which chapters follow the Fibonacci sequence maybe I have jumped in my reading of him from boy to actung baby and am feeling a bit disjointed .I mentioned Nick Cave as to parapharse him when he was speaking to Blixa Bargeld in the documentary 20000 day on earth he wish he had learned to edit at an earlier age , but why to me Satantango is Krasznahorkai Tender prey rough uncut and totally addictive , but for me I feel I have to read the other books by him in english and at a later date return to this one to fully get the sense of this as a book .As for now I was reminded of the film pi by Darren Aronfsky , which sees a young mathematician driven to madness by the search for perfection in maths like that Seiobo search for the perfect person to receive the peach is actually a flawed one art is in the eye , the moment , the time , the subject and can be perfect for only a split second .So i will return with a longer review after I have in a few years read his other books as I get hold of them in english .
Been while since I did a post of new books coming in so I grabbed a few that have arrived the last week or two .Some new some old friends in the post .
Now this is one I remember coming out in the US over a year ago Antonio Munoz Molina is one of Spain’s best known writers and In the night of time is his epic . A dark novel that follow one man as he leaves his family and escapes a Spain on the brink of Civil war .It was called a Spanish war and peace in one US review .
I have reviewed his novel ways of going home a couple of years ago . Alejandro Zambra is one of the leading voice of Chilean fiction .This is a collection of his short stories from writers trying to stop smoking or call centre worker . All featuring his ironic style .
Another returing writer .Her first novel in English Purge was one of those books in translation that seemed to break out and be read by the more general reading public .Lets hope this tale of Estonia in the world war two and then year after as two relatives try to discover the truth .When the doves disappeared(keep wanting to call it when doves cry lol ) sound even more interesting than Purge to me .
A gothic soul by Jiri Karasek Ze Lvovic , is the latest and another wonderful little hardback from Twisted spoon press . A gothic soul is the story of one man one city a man struggling with god and his soul as he sees the city through time considered one of the best Czech novels from the decadent movement .A great new read for East European lit month
Well we have managed to read between Lisa ,Tara and myself to read all the shortlist and in the end had read forurteen books between us at least two or us had read the shortlised books.Not bad as we decide only just before christmas to do a shadow jury .Next year we will be more on the ball .
Shortlisted Authors:
Bilal Tanweer: The Scatter Here is Too Great (Vintage Books/Random House, India)
Jhumpa Lahiri: The Lowland (Vintage Books/Random House, India)
Kamila Shamsie: A God in Every Stone (Bloomsbury, India)
Shamsur Rahman Faruqi: The Mirror of Beauty (Penguin Books, India)
So we weight up the list which for me was very strong a couple of writers quite well known , one truly epic novel , one new name to me at least and a short story collection from a writer I really like .So i just managed to finish the fifthn book last night and have two more to review , so thankfully the winner we choose was a book I have reviewed .
We have chosen the Mirror of beauty for the first shadow DSC prize and it is the Epic The mirror of beauty by Shamsur Rahman Faruqi .I had this down as a favourite when the list came out as I had read the book before it came out here back in 2013 when the book had come out in Inida here is my review .The book takes the life of the mother of the poet Dagh , his mother Wazir Khanam life touches many in Mughal indian and we get a slice of the world at this time is this epic novel .We must also mention that it was run close in the shadow jury by Noontide toll , we just felt this was maybe a book that lasts longer in the readers mind and soul .
have you read any books from the list ? would you like to take part next year?
Well this week has seen arrival of two book by writers I have written about before but also from different sides of the middle east .
First to arrive this week was this Novel from Israeli , the fourth book to be translated to english from this writer whom I first reviewed here on the blog with his book Almost dead , this seems to a more mature work from a writer whom , I like first time round .this book has been called the Great Israeli novel and follows the goings , comings and politics of one hilltop in modern Israeli .
Then today dropped through from Elias Khoury ,another writer I have reviewed before on the blog two books by him Yalo and As though she were sleeping .Considered by many to be one of the finest voice from Arabic literature this is his latest offering and follows one man’s journey back to Beirut from the safety of France to find the mythical ghost of a man the hero of the civil war Sinalcol .
So two writers from different sides of the middle east both at the height of the career be interesting to see which I enjoy most this time round .
Have you had anything interesting arrive this week ?
I always enjoy one of Simon at Savidge reads thoughtful posts about what it is to be a reader , like yesterdays rainy day books post .Well as ever it set me thinking and well I have been thinking for a year or two about firstly this blog and me as a reader , of course the two are connected I do choose what goes on the blog .Do i thou because this last twelve to eighteen months I have felt a bit like a runaway lorry in my reading habits and my blog has become the M1 (main motorway in the uk ) for books in translation .To steal an idea from Julio Cortazar with his book about traveling the main road in france , well this blog maybe has been driving to long and maybe needs to start turning into one or two rest stops , by this I mean books in english , african fiction things I used cover more when this blog first started , my biggest problem is I can’t help myself with books in translation , I just love them but after nearly two hundred straight books in translation , I’m feeling the need to break with my routine .A perfect example would be the collection of Anthony Burgess novels I was sent a couple of years ago , I was so excited to get these as I loved him when I used read anything years ago , but they kept being pushed back and my pile of books sent to read kept growing and they never got read , even now writing this post I have a large tinge of regret about that lack of reading those books .I’ve written about this before and sure I will again ,I’m very driven in what I read and maybe need to just make myself lighten up a bit ! I could try a challenge to do this but no I will try for 10% books this year not in translation this year .
A new arrival at Winston towers today struck a chord a may to December story ala Lolita for a new generation .Héloïse of the title is trying to seduce a doctor forty years older than herself .On press release it does say Lolita for a modern age , although I hate the term “the new ” with this book it seems hard to avoid the comparison or not to even mention it .My evening view is the wonderful debut film from Stuart Murd och of Belle and Sebastian a film inspired by his side band god help the girl which is also the title of the film .
Still shocked by yesterday’s events for one day only I turn rather poor cartoonists with a tribute to the four cartoonists that lost their lives yesterday in Paris .I’ll be back tomorrow with books
Happy new year to all my bookish blogger friends just seen new year in and off to bed in a bit as back to work the morning just finished the last book ten mins before the year ran out it only arrived today
