Recently in Non-African novels and stories Category

I wanted to like this, just because of the premise.  Two people who meet up by chance for a one night stand when graduating from college, gradually become friends, and share lives.  The story is told by recounting their acts and thoughts one day each year for twenty years.  Like those books about people living backwards, getting younger.  A gimmick, but an enticing one.

Nicholls is a fine writer, and this book would have been great on an airplane or beach holiday where I had nothing to do.  But it hard a hard time competing with Merlin (if you have 8-13 year old kids, you probably know about the dreadful Merlin TV show I am referring to).  I just found myself bored, and not really caring much about the characters. One of the problems of writing skillfully about a superficial person (the man, is).

The silver lining is I am again anxious to read African fiction.  The contemporary characters are often more interesting!  (Paradox?  African historical fiction non-existent, English historical fiction is great.  African contemporary fiction just as varied with good quality as English.)  So can't wait for African historical novel... and another perennial dream, the Vernor Vinge of Togo!

I found this BD at San Jose Public Library... I vaguely knew Bilal is a bigwig in the BD world.  Pretty confusing, I have to say.  A riff/reflection off Sarajevo/Balkans... must be a lot more subtext than I could get.  Stick to Africa.



Enki Bilal Le sommeil du monstre by kataplasm

I know the authors won't appreciate it, but these books really were trashy, some very enjoyable trash, others unremitting trash, the kind where the last 100 pages you skim looking for actions verbs, read them, close the book, it only takes 30 min. to finish, and you can't remember the names of the characters. 

That, my dears, is Poison Study by Maria Snyder (part of the whole dystopian teen lit genre).  I would stay away from it. 

Better was Robert Jordan's The Great Hunt, part of the Wheel of Time series.  Recommended by my brother-in-law, I had never heard of this million-selling series. Adult fantasy fiction has never been my genre, but I enjoyed the book a lot, but I don't see myself reading the others (10 more?). 

Best was A Deepness in the Sky, by Vernor Vinge.  It's standard space-opera fare (nobody ever gets bored or goes to the bathroom, there's no irony, the only people who matter are the heroes, who win, except maybe one or two die trying), but I haven't read any of that stuff since I was a teenager, so I thoroughly enjoyed it.  Again, though, I don't think I'll read the others in the series (if there are others).  Just not my thing, you know? 

So I am going to head back to African fiction.

Had the pleasure of reading while at the American Economics Association annual convention (which I spent the entirety of holed up in a hotel room interviewing new PhD economists for a position at Santa Clara).  Oddly, I knew Lethem only from his reading, for The New Yorker podcast, of Thurber's short story from 1936, The Wood Duck.  So Gun, with occasional music I can highly recommend.  It isn't great, but it is intriguing and challenging in its vision and realisation of a potboiler detective novel with a Chinatown-twisted tangle of sex, greed, power and love amidst a future Bay Area of humans addicted to "make" (blends of Addictol, Forgettol and such), evolved animals (Joey and Dulcie play big roles, I will let you figure out which animals they are), and Babyheads (I couldn't really wrap my head around them).  And of course, The Fat Man.  It's homage to noir and sci-fi at the same time.

The NY Times has a nice discussion with a variety of voices, designed to make middle-class parents of avid reader 12 year olds feel fine about their children's choices.  Or are we the "pushers"? Elliot read the two volumes of Maus (thanks Aunt Klara!) last night.  Did it disturb his sleep at all?  Inured, he is.

A lot of the commentators focus on how awful middle and high school are for teens. Methinks a mite exaggerated.

Here is Jay Parini:

It does seem there is more interest in dystopian fiction now, especially in high schools. I myself was drawn to novels in this vein as a teenager: George Orwell's "1984," Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" and -- especially -- "A Clockwork Orange" by Anthony Burgess. This last novel appeared when I was in high school, and I remember it vividly as a story that spoke to my own sense of a world where violence was not only prevalent but glorified, turned into a way of life. I felt myself surrounded by kids not unlike the "droogs," and knew several replicas of Dim, the muscular thug who lived only to crush those around him. I could sympathize with Alex, the hero (or anti-hero) of that book. He was gamed by the system.

Many teens feel "gamed" in this way. Like Alex, they can't "get out." The adult world has them in its cross hairs, wishing to separate the sheep from the goats, and they will do so, whatever it takes.

I've watched my three boys come through high school, which always has a brutal aspect. (The last is now in tenth grade.) It may even be more brutal these days, with an excess of testing and the watchfulness not only of parents and teachers but the big eyeball of the system itself, its vision intensified by video surveillance cameras, Facebook and the omnipresent Web, which tracks everyone down, puts every idiotic statement in the virtual concrete of electrons -- forever.

Listened to Monica Ali read this story on The New Yorker podcast.  It might be better to hear it than read it.  Very good writing.  Nice review and commentary at Perpetual folly.

He leaped four hours ahead of himself. He ruminated on the evening in future retrospect and recalled every gesture, every word. He walked back to the kitchen and stood with a new drink in front of the fridge, out of the way. "I can't do it," he said. "Can't do what?" The balls were up in the air: water slowly coming to a boil on the stove, meat seasoned on a plate sitting on the butcher block. She stood beside the sink dicing an onion. Other vegetables waited their turn on the counter, bright and doomed. She stopped cutting long enough to lift her arm to her eyes in a tragic pose. Then she resumed, more tearfully. She wasn't drinking much of her wine.

Sukie, as many of you know, attends 2nd grade at River Glen School, a wonderful Spanish immersion school that is part of San Jose Unified School District.  An amazing school, with fantastic and dedicated teachers with a well-oiled pedagogy that easily handled California's idiotic reluctance to fund 20 student classrooms.  Yesterday evening, she announced she was going to read three chapter of a Magic Tree House book.  She started.  She got to Chapter 3, and asked me to sit and listen to her read.  After reading aloud for 2 pages, she said something to the effect that, "This isn't working, Daddy, I'm just going to read quietly now."  I sit back and watch her eyes start doing that immersed in book scan back and forth, back and forth... then hear the sigh at the end of chapter, then the question, "can't I read another chapter... PLEAASE!!!"  Then in the morning she woke up early... (she never does that) to finish a couple more chapters.  "Pirates are chasing them," she observed, fully satisfied.  Her first chapter book read alone, of her own volition, and wanting to keep reading.  It was nice that it was so dramatic, and announced.

Then tonite Elliot and a couple friends went to stand in line at San Jose's own best children's bookstore, Hicklebee's, and see Suzanne Collins.  If you don't know who she is, you obviously don't have a 10-14 year old in the house.  She read an excerpt from Mockingjay, and sign-stamped their books.  All the boys were impressed by how nice she seemed, and how normal she seemed.  I loved hearing her read in a (seemingly?) southern accent.  Not the "voice" I had heard in my head when I read Hunger Games (which I liked just fine as a book for 12 year olds, but not nearly as much as other parents, who seemed to be comparing it to Henry James.)

But one more thing, as we say in Silicon Valley.  During the long wait for Suzanne Collins, Elliot spotted the latest instalment (7th?!) of The Last Apprentice series.  Feeling exapnsive, I bought it.  (Instead of grumpily saying, "Wait until it comes to the library.")  It is about 300 pages.  We got home about 8:30 pm.  It is now 10:30.  Bedtime.  He's about to finish.  Hmmm... a little too fast. No wonder he reads them six times...He just corrected me... 436 pages.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Elisée's book review is in French, followed by English :

 

Comme Daniel, lorsqu'il a choisit "L'Ombre du Vent" au ''Cimetière des Livres oubliés'', lorsque j'ai reçu ce  livre en cadeau, j'étais loin de m'imaginer la magie de l'aventure qui s'y trouvait.

"L'Ombre du Vent", c'est deux livres ! L'un parlant de l'autre ! Carlos Ruiz Zafón, l'auteur du second, décrit l'histoire assez tumultueuse du jeune Daniel, dont la vie a été définitivement marquée par le livre de Julian Carax.

C'est le genre d'histoire dans laquelle l'on se prend en sympathie pour le personnage principal. La vie de Daniel a prit un tournant décisif le jour ou il a choisit choisi L'Ombre du Vent au ''Cimetière des Livres Oubliés''. Pourquoi Julian Carax, l'auteur d'une œuvre si prisée a t-il sombré dans l'oubli le plus total ; jusqu'à se retrouver de façon anonyme sur une étagère dans les méandres du "Cimetière des Livres oubliés" dans la Barcelone d'après guerre ?

Quand j'ai lu les premières pages de ce livre, je n'ai pas échappé a ce qu'un critique a dit a son sujet : "Si vous avez le malheur de lire les trois premières pages de ce livre, vous n'avez plus aucune chance de lui échapper".

Et, si je devais résumer en trois mots cette œuvre de l'immense Carlos Ruiz Zafón, ce serait : Réelle, Émouvante, Captivante !

A lire donc sans modération !

Elisée

 
Just like Daniel when he chose The Shadow of the Wind in the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, I never imagined the magical adventure that lay ahead of me when I received this book as a gift.

The Shadow of the Wind is two books! One talking about the other! Carlos Ruiz Zafón is the real author, describing the tumultuous story of the young Daniel, whose life is forever impacted after reading the book by Julian Carax.

This is the kind of story in which one easily sympathizes with the main character. Daniel's life took a decisive turn the day he chose Carax's book. Why did the author of The Shadow of the Wind, such a prized work, sink into total oblivion; ending up anonymously on a shelf in the Cemetery of Forgotten Books in postwar Barcelona?

When I read the first few pages of this book, one of the book's critiques never escaped me:

"If you have the misfortune of reading the first three pages of this book, you have no chance of escaping it."

If I were to summarize in three words this great work by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, I would say:

 Real, Poignant, Fascinating!

To be read, therefore, without moderation!

Elisée

The guy is just too good a writer for me... I need to take an English class and read it line by line with some other people to really understand.

Here's the end of a nice review...

The numerous layers of Thursbitch are both literal and metaphorical. Ian and Sal are geologists, their stock-in-trade the very strata of the landscape, who are repeatedly "drawn" to Thursbitch, while Turner is "a Jagger" (or packman) whose trade takes him far beyond the confines of his isolated community, always to return. The everyday lives and relationships of these folk throw up huge "questions" that stand immovable and unavoidable as the standing stones that pepper the bleak landscape. Questions about love, family loyalty, mortality, belief, truth and community for starters. Followed by questions about land-use, countryside access, degenerative illness, hallucinogenic fungi, geology and folklore. Then there's the whole question of what we mean by "a place." Is it something defined by the changing actions of humankind, or does some unchangeable "genius loci" play a part in shaping and determining those actions? These are only the questions which I find myself considering today. When I read Thursbitch again (and I will), they may be different, as they may be for you, when you read this book. The reasons for this are that Thursbitch is a book that casts the reader as an enthralled participant, rather than a passive recipient. It is, to repeat, a mystery. It may unsettle you (if not actually give you nightmares), but you'll love it unequivocally nonetheless. Having managed to write a great deal without actually saying much in the way of concrete, unambiguous opinion, I'll conclude by giving my answers to the two questions that are probably uppermost in your minds. Is Alan Garner really a genius, and is Thursbitch really as good as you could hope for? The answer, to both, is yes.

J'ai bien aimé ce profile d'une écrivaine libanaise... 

Joumana Haddad déteste les étiquettes. Et s'ennuyer. Grande gueule, ultraféminine, poétesse, écrivaine, journaliste, maman, intellectuelle, provocatrice, narcissique, hyperactive... Autant de qualificatifs qui lui correspondent mais échouent à la définir. En charge des pages culturelles d'An-Nahar, le très sérieux quotidien libanais, elle dirige et finance aussi sa propre revue, un magazine érotique controversé, Jasad ("corps", en arabe), qu'elle a créé en 2008. Elle projette également d'ouvrir une Maison de la poésie à Beyrouth, qui accueillerait en résidence des écrivains étrangers. Elle travaille en outre à une thèse sur Sade et à une traduction arabe de son œuvre.