Solla's Soliques part 2

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Solla's Soliques part 2

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1solla
Editado: Sep 11, 2010, 7:11 pm

I don't really have so many posts as to require a part 2, however, I discovered today that if you order by Topics, my thread disappears into the ethernet, suspended between September Book Challenge: Books with Three Criteria at the bottom of page one
and at the top of page two:
SqueakyChu's Reading Adventures in 2010. I am hoping that adding this additional thread will nudge it back into reality.

part 1 is here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/79709

2solla
Editado: Dic 29, 2010, 11:37 pm

It appears not to have worked, as this thread is now at the top of page 2 and the original still lost, so I am recreating my list of books read this year.

BookList *recommended
81. the Corrections
*80. The brothers Karamazov
*79. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
*78. The Island at the Center of the World
77. The Master of Rain Tom Bradby
*76. Tinkers by Paul Harding
75. Life Along the Silk Road Susan Whitfield
74. The White Family
73. Tinkers
72. The Island in the Center of the World
*71. The Brothers Karamozov
*70. The Abandoned by Paul Gallico, also know as Jennie
* 69. The Book of Lost Things
*68. Reading Like a Writer
*67. The day lasts more than a hundred years
66. Life in Genghis Khan's Mongolia
*65. Wolf Hall
*64. The Children's Book
63. Empires of the Silk Road : a history of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the present
*62. The Invention of Hugo Cabret
*61.A Passage to India
*60. The Swallows of Kabul by Yasimina Khadra
*59. The Glass Room by Simon Mawer
*58. The Boy Next Door by Irene Sabatini
*57. Jamilia by Chingiz Aïtmatov
56. Retribution by Denise Mina
55. Garnethill by Denise Mina
54. Primal Tears Kelpie Wilson
53 Exile Denise Mina
*52 Troubles J.G. Farrell
*51. The Singapore Grip by J.G. Farrell
*50. Wizard of the Crow by Ngugi wa Thiong'o
*49. Ex Libris
48. SS Proleterka by Fleur Jaeggy
*47. Housekeeping Marilynne Robinson
46. So Vast the Prison Assia Djebar
45. Children of the New World : a novel of the Algerian war by Assia Djebar ; translated from the French by Marjolijn de Jager
44. Singular Intimacies by Danielle Ofri
43. The Siege of Krishnapur J.G. Farrell
*42. Some Prefer Nettles by Junichiro Tanizaki
*41. The spirit catches you and you fall down by Anne Fadiman
40. Rain of Gold by Victor Villasenor
39. Notes from the Underground by Dostoevsky
*38 The Grandmothers by Doris Lessing
*37. Nikolski by Nicolas Dickner
*36. Middlemarch George Elliot
35. Swann's Way by Marcel Proust
*34. Dreams in a Time of War by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
33. Weights and Measures by Joseph Roth
32. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Vintage) Larsson, Stieg
*31. Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes Ansary, Tamim
30.Change Your Brain, Change Your Body by Daniel Amen
29.Weights and Measures by Joseph Roth
28. The Battle Lost and Won Manning, Olivia
27. The Danger Tree Manning, Olivia
*26. Friends and Heroes
*25. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit Winterson, Jeanette
*24. Never Let Me Go Ishiguro, Kazuo
*23. The Spoilt City Manning, Olivia
*22. THE GREAT FORTUNE MANNING, OLIVIA
21The Radetzsky March by Joseph Roth
20. Attila Bartis. Tranquility
19.The Help Stockett, Kathryn
18. The Idea of Justice Sen, Amartya
*17. The Book Thief Zusak, Markus
16. Israel and the Arab World, A History
*15. My A Most Wanted Man Carre, John le
*14. Name Is Red Pamuk, Orhan
*13. Sun and Shadow: An Erik Winter Novel Edwardson, Ake
*12. Frozen Tracks: A Chief Inspector Erik Winter Novel Edwardson, Ake
11. One Good Turn: A Novel Atkinson, Kate
10. 500 Self-Portraits Bell, Julian
9. A Burnt Child Dagerman, Stig
8. Paradise Lost (Penguin Classics) Milton, John
*7. Snake Catcher Masud, Naiyer
*6. Never End (Chief Inspector Erik Winter Novels) Edwardson, Ake
5. Blue Shoe Lamott, Anne
4.Miss Lonelyhearts West, Nathaniel
3. The Passport (Masks)
*2. Death Angels: A Chief Inspector Erik Winter Novel (Chief Inspector Erik Winter Novels)
*1. Children of Violence Series by Doris Lessing

3solla
Sep 12, 2010, 4:36 pm

Well, I should say something about the Garnethill Trilogy by Denise Mina, since I've now finished the three of them. They are contemporary, set in Glasgow, Scotland, with characters from the lower/working classes and a main character, Maureen, whose father sexually abused her as a child. She hasn't had an easy time. The relationship with her family, most of whom refuse to believe she was abused, is at the center of the book. Especially as one of her sisters has gone to find her father who had left years before, found him ill, and invited him back to Glasgow. Maureen is not a professional crime solver. The first book starts with the murder of her boyfriend. As, I wrote about the 2nd book, Exile, this book was gripping, and realistic in terms of descriptions of the characters and the surroundings of Glasgow. Maureen is a drinker and acts the part, behaving recklessly and creating problems for herself. She has a best friend who is abrasive and works in a women's shelter, which is the source of the second case in Exile as one of the woman who has left the shelter is found dead. Maureen meets her husband - the natural suspect - and doesn't believe that he did it, which leads to her pursuit of the actual killer. The third book, Resolution finds her preoccupied with her father because her sister is pregnant, and she is afraid for the baby as the sister is seeing a lot of their father.

There is much appealing about the books and the main character, though Maureen also makes me uneasy as in certain ways her value system is much different from mine. And I'm not so sure about the evolution of that value system through the three books and the way that she works through her issues. I would probably read another book outside this series to see what the author does with another character. I'm not sure beyond that. As a mystery/thriller, the books are good. About whether I trust the author enough to give me more than that, I don't know.

4booksontrial
Sep 12, 2010, 4:49 pm

How is her value system different from yours, if you don't mind me asking?

5solla
Sep 12, 2010, 5:01 pm

Well, I don't believe that anyone ever has the right to take another human life for whatever reason - of course that makes me different from the majority of people and I'm sure that I read books by many of them.

6solla
Sep 12, 2010, 5:19 pm

About the Boy Next Door - (the touchstone came up as something spam by an email address, so I've taken it off http://www.librarything.com/work/8408841/book/64504825) by Irene Sabatine, the blurb goes "In Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, the son of Lindiwe Bishop's white neighbor, seventeen-year-old Ian McKenzie, is arrested for a terrible crime. A year later Ian returns home, the charges against him dropped. He is brash and boisterous, full of charm and swagger, and fascinating to fifteen-year-old Lindiwe." So, I expect that event to figure in the story, and it does, but not so much as I expect. What does figure is the building of the relationship between the two, and how Lindiwe never is fearful of Ian, and so, we also, or, I also, experience him as trustworthy. Though it does come up, the question of just what did happen, and the story changes some, but it doesn't change that something in this boy\man is to be trusted. This is not because Ian is saintly. He seems very crude in some ways, too accepting of mates who openly say racist things even in the presence of mixed race Lindiwe. He absents himself from her life more than once. But as the country is deteriorating and her childhood family is deteriorating, he, and their son, and their life together are still something she can trust.

7solla
Editado: Sep 12, 2010, 5:57 pm

The Glass Room is set in Czechoslovakia shortly before WWII. Viktor and Liesel Landauer receive a plot of land from her parents on which they will build a house. On their honeymoon they meet an architect, of the modernist school of the like of Mies Van der Rohe, Corbusier, form follows function, minimalism. They employ him to build their house, and it is to be a symbol of the future, and a place of transparency, where the old lies are not needed. Well, things do not quite turn out that way. Hitler looms over the new Czech future. The husband is Jewish. He is more aware than most of the danger, while others think it will all blow over. Viktor and Liesel are clearly in love with each other, and continue to love each other, but there is more that goes on. These are very emotionally reserved people, yet I liked them, was concerned for them, and for several other characters in the book. The house is certainly a representation of their hopes in some way, and, in the time, its history is also tied up with the hope of all for a new type of world. It goes through a series of different uses as the conditions in Czechoslovakia change. The novel follows the Landauers as they flee Czechoslovakia, through the way, and then several years later during the Soviet era. It also follows the fate of Liesel's best friend and her husband, who do not leave, and another woman and her child (about whom I am not saying more because I don't want to be a spoiler). In the glass house is a room divider that is made translucent onyx on which the rays of the setting sun awaken in a glow of color. In the book the ending fills that same function, with all the subdued emotion becoming focused into that point at the end. Not that it is overwritten, or melodramatic, not at all, it is simple and subdued, it is just that it has all come home.

8rebeccanyc
Sep 13, 2010, 9:25 am

Solla, where your (or any thread) appears in the list depends on how you sort it. If you sort it alphabetically, S is always going to appear low down on the list. If you sort it by "last message" (which is what I do), threads with the most recent posts appear first.

9solla
Sep 14, 2010, 11:11 pm

Finished the Swallows of Kabul, a short book, about Afghanistan under the Taliban. It was published in 2002, so I don't know if it was at all influenced by 9/11. The writer is Algerian, Arab but not Afghan so I don't know on what his depiction is based. That depiction is very grim. Particularly he describes an absence of joy, not being able to sing even, and a prevalent attitude that women are worth little, so it is not so important to treat them justly anyway - this is not the attitude of the characters into whose heads he goes more, but expressed in actions and words by others. One thing that impressed me, when he described being inside a burqa, was the sense of the burqa covering up the humanity of women so that the person throwing a stone or being brutal did not have to encounter it. A thousand Splendid suns by the author of the Kite Runner covers this same period, but somehow didn't have the same start reality for me (cruelty was depicted but did not feel as real). Besides the simple brutality, the characters seem to be debilitated or to become so in the course of the story, with perhaps one exception. Nonetheless their humanity is clear. I would be interested to read what he has written about Algeria. Recommended.

10solla
Sep 21, 2010, 12:43 am

I'd heard of Passage to India a long time ago and sort of vaguely intended to read it. It's a language arts exercise to say what you imagine about a book before you read it, and I realize I did have some notions about this one somehow. I imagined a train or a water journey through the country. I was imagining a woman traveling through India, and I was imagining this as a voyage of discovery more than a voyage to a British dominated place. The woman would have been a bit like Ingrid Bergman only a generation more modern and she would have been traveling through the jungles of India on sort of a journey of self discovery.
But really, the time period was much later than what I was picturing, being after WWI rather than back in the 19th century somewhere. It is well past the period where India was regarded as an exotic or appealing place as it might have been early in the 1800s when some Brits who were stationed there "went native." Instead it is a time when the general view of the British civil servants is that the natives are lacking morally and intellectually.
But the book isn't so much about them as about those who attempt not to get caught up in this point of view and really try to meet as individuals. Mainly this is Fielding, a British teacher at the college, and, on the Indian side, Aziz, a Moslem Indian who works to regard the British as something other than oppressors. But the events of the book start with the arrival of Mrs. Moore, the mother of Ronny, a typical bureaucrat with all the stereotypical beliefs, who comes out with Miss Quested, who is possibly going to marry her son, but wants to see him as he is in India before making her decision. Miss Quested talks about wanting to see the real India, yet it seems a bit a of unreal role, though not one she knowingly puts on. Mrs. Moore doesn't speak this way, but when she runs into Aziz, a real Indian, when she had stepped into a Mosque, she is able to encounter him as an individual. The two of them bond very quickly. Fielding and Aziz, also, simply meet and like each other. They know quickly that there is something special about their friendship. On the other hand, Aziz tries very hard to provide the two women with an excursion and a good time, and things go very wrong.
The passage to India is really about how roles and power get in the way of real human encounters, and how difficult it is to see the real India or anyplace or culture.

11solla
Editado: Sep 21, 2010, 10:13 pm

Meanwhile, I was practicing Spanish with a Spanish version of The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick. I think the book would be aimed at about a 9 to 11 year old, so just about my speed. I enjoyed it a lot, what I understood of it, anyway. It is about a boy who lives in a train station. This is the sort of train station that is filled with shops, restaurants, etc. maybe more like an airport at the present. It is set in 1931 in Paris. It has many pencil drawings within which make the action easier to follow. The boy's father has died in a fire, and then his uncle who came to get him, has mysteriously disappeared. His uncle took care of keeping the clocks in the train station going, so, Hugo, wanting to keep his home in the station, continues to take care of the clocks. Checks arrive for his uncle, but Hugo can't cash them, so he has to steal his food. He also steals tools and mechanical parts that he needs to try to repair an automaton that his father had drawn pictures of in a notebook, and that Hugo had found in the remains of the museum fire in which his father died. He is caught in his stealing by an old man who owns a toy store. The man confiscates his notebook, tells him he's going to burn it, then later offers to let him work for it (he had told Hugo he burnt it, but his granddaughter, Isabelle, told Hugo he hadn't - the old man offers to let him work on the chance he hasn't burnt it). So Hugo, the old man, Isabelle, and Etienne, Isabelle's friend who goes to the college of cinema, all become intertwined and the true history of the automaton is revealed. I enjoyed it a lot, particularly how Isabelle and Hugo acted like a typical pair of siblings - though they were not - being really nasty to each other at times.

12booksontrial
Editado: Sep 21, 2010, 10:59 pm

>11 solla:: solla,

Somehow it reminds me of the movie "The Terminal".

>10 solla::

On the other hand, Aziz tries very hard to provide the two women with an excursion and a good time, and things go very wrong.

How did things go wrong? Could you be more specific? I don't mind spoilers.

13atimco
Sep 22, 2010, 8:34 am

11: I've heard good things about this book, especially the drawings. It's on my wishlist! It sounds like a fun story, maybe a little akin to Konigsberg's From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, one of my all-time favorites. And then there's Gaiman's The Graveyard Book. What is it that is so fun about kids living in public places?

14RidgewayGirl
Sep 22, 2010, 10:09 pm

I saw the movie version of A Passage to India when I was in high school and it stayed with me for years. I wonder if I should read the book when I'm feeling particularly emotionally robust?

15solla
Editado: Sep 22, 2010, 11:32 pm

#14 My opinion is that it is not depressing. I think less depressing than say the Farrel books, Troubles, Singapore Grip and the Siege of Krishnapur. I don't think you need to wait until you are particularly emotionally robust. Perhaps I should try to see the movie.
#12 you might not mind spoilers but I don't want to say on the thread.
#13 I think I liked Inventions of Hugo Cabaret better than the Graveyard Book.

16tomcatMurr
Editado: Sep 23, 2010, 11:21 am

Passage to India is a Masterpiece of the highest order. I urge you to read it ASAP.

thanks for your thoughts on it, Solla.

17solla
Oct 11, 2010, 12:34 am

I read Empires of the Silk Road : a history of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the present because I wanted to know more about the area of the world near Kazakhstan and Kirghistan and the Eurasian steppes, in general, where so many migrations seem to originate. There were a few interesting ideas about Eurasian culture. These were mostly about the group of followers surrounding a leader who would sacrifice their lives for him - a group that could be independent of family or clan membership. And, also about the burial practices that showed up in Europe - Greece, for instance - that originated with migrating groups. The book talked about the Great Wall of China, as being build, not to protect against the nomadic people, but to keep the nomadic people out of the land that had been taken from them. But, all in all, there was so much about who was able to take power from whom, and little to differentiate one group from another. Aside from a map on the inside cover I don't think there were any. Then there were a couple of chapters that were about the state of modern art. I'm not sure why they author chose to write about that here - and the tone of it made me distrust the accuracy of all the rest of the book. His point, I think, was that the emphasis on new for the sake of newness, and discarding of traditional forms has been a mistake which has been bad for art. Mostly he mentions visual arts and poetry, some music. I don't disagree with the first part of that, but he rather over generalized his statements about art during the modern period and since. There has been a lot of good art and writing in the period. Alice Neel, for instance has been painting all through it, and Leanard Baskin. Anyway, I don't recommend it, except perhaps to a scholar of the history of the area - which seems to be who its written for anyway.

From the very beginning of the The Children's Book I had a feeling of being within the world of the characters, and this being a book which I would sink into. It is set at the end of the Victorian era and then into WWI. It follows a group of people who revolve around the family of a story teller - her books are written for children. There are 3 or 4 different families or groups involved, but they are all interrelated. The writer may be modeled on E. Nesbit of the Five Children and It, etc. as she is a Fabian as Nesbit was, and there are other similarities. The book goes back and forth between honing in on individuals, and talking in broader terms about the time. I highly recommend it.

18RidgewayGirl
Oct 12, 2010, 5:28 pm

I found The Children's Book to be something to slow down and inhabit. I loved it, although I didn't like many of the characters, and still find myself thinking of bits of it from time to time. Such excellent historical fiction has emerged recently, between this and Wolf Hall and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet.

19solla
Oct 12, 2010, 11:00 pm

I am in the middle of Wolf Hall (based on your recommendation), and have the thousand autumns on hold but I am 211 of 278 holds on 78 copies, so that one may take awhile.

20solla
Oct 16, 2010, 8:57 pm

The day lasts more than a hundred years by Chingiz Aïtmatov
I read this because of how much I liked the book, Jamila by the same author. While Jamilia was set in mountainous Kyrgistan, this book is set in the neighboring country of Kazakhstan, on the Central Asian steppes, in a particularly stark setting. The pov character, Yedigei, and his wife ended up there, working for the railroad, when he came back from WWII with a kind of brain injury which left his body weakened for a time. There are two stories from his pov, one about his old friend who has just died whom he is trying to bury in the graveyard of his choice. This graveyard is located in traditional territory that is perhaps half a day away, and then the grave must be dug in the frozen ground. The old friend is the one who had invited him to the railroad junction to recover from his injury. Yedigei also tells the story in reminiscing about how another family came to live at the railroad junction. Abutulip also served in WWII. He was a prisoner of war. But apprarently soviet prisoners of war were expected to kill themselves, so his survival was a disgrace. Afterwards, though, he fought in Yugoslavia as a partisan. Depending on the year, that was a redeeming factor, or another thing against him. So, he and his family have come to the railway crossing to escape their past. Yedigei becomes attached to this whole family. The two families become very intertwined with Abutulip teaching Yedigei's daughters along with his own sons before they start school.

From time to time another story breaks in. This is about how a couple of cosmonauts have come into contact with peoples of another planet. It is told via communications of these cosmonauts to earth, but also in terms of a meeting of various world powers trying to decide how to respond to this event. The people of this other planet have learned to live in peace and the cosmonauts have journeyed to their world to learn more.

The center of this novel, like Jamilia, is a love story, an inappropriate one, as far as the culture is concerned. This story did not have the lyrical beauty of the other shorter one, but it did have memoriable characters, and a rich sense of the life and tradition of the people in a harsh environment.

21solla
Editado: Oct 16, 2010, 9:58 pm

Este mensaje fue borrado por su autor.

22solla
Editado: Oct 16, 2010, 10:05 pm

I found Life in Genghis Khan's Mongolia browsing in the library to find something else about the Asian's stepped than the last book - the Silk Trade in 17- that I read. It's kind of a kids books, but not a bad one, with more description of the culture.

Finally, I finished Wolf Hall. I think its strength - and also that of The Children's Book is in putting you into a time with all its strictures and worldview, so that you accept them in the reality of the novel. I don't know how accurate the depiction of Thomas Cromwell is (at first I was mistaking him for Oliver Cromwell, but this is a few generations earlier) - he is very loyal to whomever he serves, right or wrong, but also has more modern and generous views of religion, women, etc. and people in general than others of the time period - but it is believable. There are several characters who go to horrible deaths for refusing to recant what they believe - Thomas More is put to death but not as painfully - and it brought back my time as a young Catholic wondering whether I would be brave enough to die for my faith or good enough to kiss the sores of lepers like Francis of Assisi. Both books made me think that England was not a very nice place for children to be - not a lot of tenderness for kids in Wolf Hall, and probably they were not thought of as children in the same way children are today. In the Children's book, the children were treated well within their families ( well most of them) but were supposed to stoically bear institutionalized abuse in school.

Death is very present in Wolf Hall, at the hands of the state, but also, for ordinary people in a sweating sickness that comes during the summer and carries people off suddenly. This is not true of the Children's Book, until the last chapters during WWI when all the losses seem to rob their lives of its meaning, or maybe that was just the way I felt, until the final chapters when the survivors came together.

Both books are very rich and well worth reading.

23solla
Editado: Oct 25, 2010, 1:00 am

Behind in my reviews again. I picked up The Book of Lost things and was completely immersed in it until it was done. It begins with David's mother very ill and then dying. David isolates himself and when his father begins seeing another woman he has his first episode of blacking out and realizing that he has experienced some other place when he comes to. When his father marries Rose, and they have a child David keeps himself outside of the family. He also hears books speaking, and becomes aware of the crooked man. Finally, he hears his mother's voice and follows it into a different place. One of the nice things about the book are how some of the characters in the other place tell stories which are similar to some well-known fairy tales. I am not sure if these versions are some of those alternate versions of Grimm which are scarier than the more familiar versions, or if they are original, but they fit very well into David's adventure which really is about dealing with loss and pain without letting them destroy or embitter you. That may make this sound like a book with a moral, but it is much better than that. Recommended.

24solla
Oct 30, 2010, 12:54 pm

I expected to get a method for looking at novels from Reading Like a Writer, but it was not so much a method, as going through multiple examples and talking about what was conveyed by the author. I enjoyed this book a lot. Perhaps the main point was the multiplicity of methods by which you can taken into a story. I particularly enjoyed how she mentioned the cliche of "show, don't tell," and showed examples of lively writing that broke the prohibition. At the end there was a list of Books to be read immediately, which I intended to copy down, but the book is due today, and I haven't done it.

some authors on the list
Ryunosuke Akutagawa
Louisa May Alcott
Jane Austen
Isaac Babel
James Baldwin
Honere de Balzac
Donald Barthelme
Harold Brodkey
Charles Baxter
Samuel Beckett
Elizabeth Bowen
Jane Bowles
Paul Bowles
Emily Bronte
Italo Calvino
Raymond Carver
Cervantes
John Cheever
Anton Checkhov
Junot Diaz
Charles Dickens
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Stuard Dybek
Deborah Eisenberg
George Eliot
Stanley Elkin
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Gustave Flaubert
Paula Fox
Jonathan Franzen
Mavis Gallant
William Gaddis
David Gates
Edward Gibbon
Nikolai Gogol
Henry Green
L.P. Hartley
Ernest Hemingway
Zbigniew Herbert
Milosz Czeslaw
Henry James
Randall Jarrell
Denis Johnson
Samuel Johnson
James Joyce
Franz Kafka
John Le Carre
Nadezdha Mandelstam
Katherine Mansfield
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Jay McInerney
Herman Helville
John Milton
Alice Munro
Vladimir Nabokov
Tim O'Brien
Flannery O'Connor
ZZ Packer
Konstantin Paustovsky
Richard Price
Marcel Proust
Thomas Pynchon
Samuel Richardson
Phillip Roth
Juan Rulfo
J.D. Salinger
Shakespeare
Gary Shteyngart
Sophocles
Scott Spencer
Edward St. Aubyn
Christina Stead
Francis Steegmuller
Gertrude Stein
Stendhal
Rex Stout
Peter Taylor
Tatyana Tolstaya
Leo Tolstoy
William Trevor
Ivan Turgenev
Mark Twain
Heinrich Von Kleist
Rebecca West
Joy Williams
James Woods
Virginia Woolf
Richard Yates

25rebeccanyc
Oct 30, 2010, 1:07 pm

I have that book and loved it too. If I remember, I will find it and post the list of books to be read immediately (not that I read them immediately!).

26RidgewayGirl
Nov 1, 2010, 4:57 pm

Yes, Prose has a lot to do with the swollen state of my TBR! I read A Ship Made of Paper by Scott Spencer as a result as well as several short stories by Chekov.

27solla
Nov 4, 2010, 1:20 am

I am usually not so interested in lists of book (i.e.the top 100 book of all time, etc.) but something focused like this, recommended by someone who has useful things to say, is another matter. I would especially like to read something by the folks whose writing I don't know at all. It would be great if you shared the list Rebecca, though it's a fair amount of work to type that all up.

28solla
Nov 15, 2010, 12:00 am

Life Along the Silk Road Susan Whitfield was again something I picked up to try to learn more about the steppes of Asia. The book was not great, but it was interesting enough, picking a time period of about a hundred years and telling about it from the point of views of several different fictional characters. It was probably more China oriented that I wanted, but then there was a lot of interaction between China and the nomadic peoples.

The White Family by Maggie Gee. I enjoyed reading it, but don't find myself with much to say about it. Some of the characters do evil acts, yet they are sympathetically portrayed. Good depiction of how differently people can become even growing up in the same family, and, of how difficult it can be to escape the cost of racism even when you are not one.

Tinkers just starting this, beautiful language.

The Island in the Center of the World - about halfway through. As much about Holland in the 17th century as about New York, Holland being a center of progressive ideas and tolerance in that time period.

The Brothers Karamozov I am happy to say that I enjoyed this just as much at 59 as I did at 20 or so.

The Abandoned by Paul Gallico, also known as Jennie - very much an animal story in the tradition of Black Beauty, though with a different premise. An 8 year old boy who loves cats and isn't allowed to have one runs across the street to pet one and is hit by a car. He wakes as a cat out in the cold London world. Very good story.

29solla
Nov 27, 2010, 6:29 pm

Tinkers is two parallel stories. One is about a man dying and his memories; the other is about his father, who was an epileptic and a poet. There are parallels between the two - aside from being father and son - in that both lost their father from their life. As I said before, the language is beautiful. The stories are rich and reverberate. They play with consciousness - a dying man going in and out of consciousness, waking hallucinations, memories and dreams - and an epileptic describing the state of the world and his mind before and as he has an episode. There isn't a villain, but there is loss.

Another book, the Master of Rain is a thriller set in Shanghai in 1926. On the one hand I was thoroughly caught up in this novel. It was suspenseful and entertaining. It may have the flavor of Shanghai in 1926 - I don't really know. It seemed like it could have just as easily have been set in Chicago, for despite one Chinese detective, and the Chinese mobster, and the occasional view of a starving Chinese family, it didn't stand out to me as Chinese. Most of the characters are European, including the Russian woman with whom the main character gets involved. His involvement with her is really the core of the book around which the "case" revolves. I enjoyed it, but didn't have the feeling that anything about it would stick with me.

30solla
Dic 15, 2010, 3:09 pm

I just started reading The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings by James Baldwin. I read only the intro and the first essay. Then I stopped reading so I could soak it in. But I will have to reread the first essay, because after reading last night today I can not recall whether what I remember about the reading and what I wanted to think about was in the first essay or from quoting Baldwin in the intro. Baldwin was disagreeing with those lamenting that the average person didn't think about intellectual issues, saying that they couldn't be expected to do that, having their lives to deal with, but what he did lament was an emptiness in their daily lives of having to strive for things that we do not really need or even want. That was not the wording exactly.

That latter is not a new thought - I'm not sure when that essay was written, I imaging pre 1970 - but I found myself wanting to reassess the state of society and the satisfactions that people are able to obtain through their work and daily life, since I last thought much about it. Because now, unlike 20 - 30 years ago, I keep my mind from dwelling on the thought that much or most of the work we do in this country doesn't have to do with creating or providing anything beautiful or useful, but with buying and selling.

Truthfully though, most of the jobs I have held have been more meaningful than that. What I do now, though, is not. It uses my mind, a little, but I don't see the worth of it. The good thing about it is that I can leave it behind once I leave work, and let me focus outside of work hours on what I consider my real work. Also it pays well, which is something I need about 5 years short of retirement with a work history that was mostly low paying social service jobs.

31theaelizabet
Dic 15, 2010, 4:20 pm

Solla, I bought Cross of Redemption just the other day. Baldwin is one of my favorite writers. I can't wait to dig in, perhaps after the holidays and my reading of Brothers Karamazov. I'll look forward to reading your thoughts on it.

32dchaikin
Dic 15, 2010, 11:34 pm

Hi Solla, just stopping by, catching up. I've also read Tinkers, Wolf Hall and Brothers Karamazov recently...well, I'm still reading BK. Enjoyed your comments here.

33solla
Dic 19, 2010, 6:27 pm

I have been reading two books that involve the Dutch. One is the Island at the Center of the World by Russell Shorto, which is the story of Manhatten when it was a Dutch settlement (about 1616 - 1664) and outpost of the Dutch East India trading company, before it was taken over by the Englsih. The Netherlands at that time was one of the more liberal in Europe, being a republic and also a place that sheltered various dissedents or people seeking religious freedom. Generally trading settlements were run by the company, and this is true of Manhattan, but the book is the story of the attempt of the colonists to move it out of control of the company to a form of self-government more in line with the country they were from. They were on the verge of obtaining this when war broke out between England and the Netherlands, which resulted in the Dutch legislature rescinding the agreement. What stimulated this book was the discovery and slow process of translation of documents from the colony in the late 1960's. Basically the book is suggesting that the freedom and diversity of peoples that existed in the Netherland influence the expectations and experience of Dutch Manhatten, as well, so that, it too, welcomed people of diverse background, and that the existence of this colony then had an effect on the ideas and expectations of the future U.S. It is an interesting read.

The other book is The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell. It begins in 1799 and the Dutch East India Company is a trading partner to Japan which expelled most Europeans, including the English, earlier. Much of the book takes place on the very small island of Dejima near Nagasaki where the Dutch are required to stay away from the main part of Japan. It centers around Jacob de Zoet whose prospective father in law has found him a place in the company as a way to increase his fortune and become worthy to marry his daughter. Jacob has a sort of sponsor in the man who has come to Dejima to take over as head of the company and clean up the rampant corruption that has been going on. One thread of the story is about Jacob's experience with this man and with the company. Another thread is told from the point of view of a midwife with whom Jacob falls in love. For me the strongest part of the book was told from this woman's point of view after she was forced into a monastary when her father died. There are smaller sections told from the point of view of other Japanese characters who are interrelated, such as the Japanese man who wanted to marry the midwife but whose family refused to allow it, and the magistrate of Nagasaki. The characters are very real, accessible while being in the context of their time, revealing a lot about both European and Japanese culture of the time. I got very caught up in this novel, and it is among the best I've read this year.

34solla
Dic 19, 2010, 6:38 pm

#31 the essay I was referring to was actually written about 1959. I am reading Baldwin very slowly on purpose. This is a paragraph that struck me talking about whether the general cultural level is on the rise with the increase of the middle class: "The artistic objects by which they are surrounded cannot possibly fulfill their original function of disturbing the peace - which is till the only method by which the mind can be improved - they bear witness instead to the attainment of a certain level of economic stability and a certain thin measure of sophistication. But art and ideas come out the passion and torment of experience: it is impossible to have a real relationship to the first if one's aim is to be protected from the second."

On the other side of this argument, I recall reading once that artists mainly come from the middle class. Artists themes may arrive out of torment and discontent but it may be there has to be some sense of what is possible, as well, which a certain economic level and even the thin measure of sophistication, help provide.

35solla
Dic 19, 2010, 6:57 pm

#32 - Daniel, it may have been your review that led me to read Tinkers. I'm not sure because I put them on hold, and then by the time the book is available I've usually forgotten what led me to want to read it. One thing about Tinkers though, is that it came close to never being published despite being an amazingly good book. I don't know quite whether that is hopeful or the opposite for someone trying to get published, but I'll try to think of it as the former.

36solla
Dic 29, 2010, 11:36 pm

Continuing with The Cross of Redemption - have to hurry it up. It is due in a couple of days, and on hold so I can't renew it. I have just finished the Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. It is a clever book, with a clever look at what was wrong with life in the 50's and 60's, and what is wrong with those who grew up in that time.

Having just finished, I read this by Baldwin, in an essay entitled, "The Artist's Struggle for Integrity":

"... you are bullwhipped into dealing with whatever it is that hurt you. And what is crucial here is that if it hurt you, that is not what is important. Everybody's hurt. What is important, what corrals you, what bullwhips you, what drives you, torments you, is that you must find some way of using this to connect you with everyone else alive. This is all you have to do it with. You must understand that your pain is trivial except insofar as you can use it to connect with other people's pain; and insofar as you can do that with your pain, you can be released from it, and then hopefully it works the other way round too; insofar as I can tell you what it is to suffer, perhaps I can help you suffer less."

And, from "As Much Truth as One Can Bear": What the writer is always trying to do is utilize the particular in order to reveal something much larger and heavier than any particular can be."

And, what Baldwin says he is aiming at, "perception at the pitch of passion" (quoting Henry James).

Well, in light of this, what can I say about the Corrections. It is quite clear to me that James Baldwin is going for exactly what he has said here. This is what comes out in the descriptions of his characters and their acts.

It isn't clear to me what Franzen is going for. Franzen's book is largely character studies, centered around a midwestern family of two parents and 3 kids. There are a few others included in some depth, a wife, a lover, a child. The characters aren't one dimensional, and they aren't unsympathetic. They move from characature to sympathetic portrayal. I find them a bit incoherent though. I couldn't always tell caused the turn. I didn't deeply understand or really believe in them. The parent generation was presented as a part of a generation with "standards" and status seeking, while the younger generation rebelled or didn't, but was part of a time in which people wanted to be different. The father of the family was cold in his actions, and critical, but loved his children, and is now going through a breakdown of his body and his intellect. The mother is long suffering and given to admiring the wrong things. The daughter Denise was the most likable, seeming to genuinely seek to listen and understand without judgment - then she has a period of being mean to her lover. The irresponsible son becomes responsible. His character rockets all over the place. The responsible son seems to care about his mother, but is ready to ride roughshod over her, insisting that she solve her problems his way, and then leaves.

Well, Baldwin sets a tough standard. I suspect somewhere Franzen is writing about his pain, but I think he is keeping it at a distance with his cleverness, and, though I was entertained by the book, I think I was kept at a distance too. I wonder what his intent was in writing it - how he thought about what he was doing.

37janemarieprice
Dic 30, 2010, 1:12 am

36 - Great review! I did not like The Corrections at all when I read it but could never quite put my finger on what it was that was off for me. You expressed my reasons for dislike perfectly.

38solla
Dic 30, 2010, 2:09 am

Thanks, Jane. I think that reading Baldwin has a clarifying effect - reminding me of my own purpose.