Nate's bookshelf: all en-US Sat, 05 Apr 2025 18:01:17 -0700 60 Nate's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Transit 1793889 290 Anna Seghers 3746651530 Nate 4 to-read, up-next
But my only regret in reading this is I had to do so quickly, for a book club. It would have provided a richer experience stretched out over time, rather than rushed. For although its only 250 pages (in my edition), the pages move very slowly.

The writing style is atmospheric, and almost has an "anti noir" element that I've loved in later writers such as Javier Marias (though the style is different). It also reminded me, perhaps strangely or perhaps unsurprisingly, of the movie Casablanca, as well as Graham Greene's End of the Affair. The sort of damaged romance. The ghost like feeling of loneliness.

The solitude that comes when one senses doom before proceeding, but proceeds anyway. That dangerous solitude that often feels inevitable.

The book is patient, human, longing, and detailed descriptions of the environment.

Due to the speed of which I read it, I didn't quite immerse myself in the atmosphere as much as I liked. (I still read slowly, just without the breaks I would've normally given myself).

I'll refrain from describing the plot of the novel, except that I almost viewed it as a doppleganger tale of sorts.

I remember loving the film version of this -- but I've already forgot quite a lot about that movie, aside from its decision to modernize the setting.

At the moment, with a new rise of nazism, and a continued rise of propaganda and right wing cruelty, books like this take on more importance. And on that small note, I appreciated reading the narrators thoughts on the details of that time period, as they were happening, specifically his disgust at swastikas, which at one point he describes as:

"My blood runs cold at the sight of swastikas, and I always notice them immediately wherever they are, much like a man who's terrified of spiders is always aware of them."

But let's end on a romantic quote, as I feel that represents the book better, which finds yearning and human struggle peaking through the darkness of history.

"It feels as if you were the first man I'd met, not the last one."]]> 3.66 1944 Transit
author: Anna Seghers
name: Nate
average rating: 3.66
book published: 1944
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/05
date added: 2025/04/05
shelves: to-read, up-next
review:
A novel filled with waiting and boredom, to the point where sometimes it almost felt boring to read.

But my only regret in reading this is I had to do so quickly, for a book club. It would have provided a richer experience stretched out over time, rather than rushed. For although its only 250 pages (in my edition), the pages move very slowly.

The writing style is atmospheric, and almost has an "anti noir" element that I've loved in later writers such as Javier Marias (though the style is different). It also reminded me, perhaps strangely or perhaps unsurprisingly, of the movie Casablanca, as well as Graham Greene's End of the Affair. The sort of damaged romance. The ghost like feeling of loneliness.

The solitude that comes when one senses doom before proceeding, but proceeds anyway. That dangerous solitude that often feels inevitable.

The book is patient, human, longing, and detailed descriptions of the environment.

Due to the speed of which I read it, I didn't quite immerse myself in the atmosphere as much as I liked. (I still read slowly, just without the breaks I would've normally given myself).

I'll refrain from describing the plot of the novel, except that I almost viewed it as a doppleganger tale of sorts.

I remember loving the film version of this -- but I've already forgot quite a lot about that movie, aside from its decision to modernize the setting.

At the moment, with a new rise of nazism, and a continued rise of propaganda and right wing cruelty, books like this take on more importance. And on that small note, I appreciated reading the narrators thoughts on the details of that time period, as they were happening, specifically his disgust at swastikas, which at one point he describes as:

"My blood runs cold at the sight of swastikas, and I always notice them immediately wherever they are, much like a man who's terrified of spiders is always aware of them."

But let's end on a romantic quote, as I feel that represents the book better, which finds yearning and human struggle peaking through the darkness of history.

"It feels as if you were the first man I'd met, not the last one."
]]> Orbital 123136728 207 Samantha Harvey 0802161545 Nate 3 to-read
A philosophical slice of life 'novel' about the mundane details of orbiting earth.

And it is filled with generous details of the lives of astronauts that I've never considered, as well as a couple pages of pure beauty and even transcendence.

But mostly, I couldn't get into the writing style or the tempo of the novel. I think I wanted something more "musical" in texture. Maybe its the timing of when I picked it up -- but if it wasn't so brief, I would have definitely put it down. In short, I like what its attempting more than what it does.

That said, my friend loves it, so who knows, maybe its me. So far, my reading year hasn't been amazing, but the books on my queue now are all exciting to me, so hoping to turn this around ! ]]> 3.57 2023 Orbital
author: Samantha Harvey
name: Nate
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/02
date added: 2025/04/05
shelves: to-read
review:
On paper, this seems like a book I would easily fall in love with.

A philosophical slice of life 'novel' about the mundane details of orbiting earth.

And it is filled with generous details of the lives of astronauts that I've never considered, as well as a couple pages of pure beauty and even transcendence.

But mostly, I couldn't get into the writing style or the tempo of the novel. I think I wanted something more "musical" in texture. Maybe its the timing of when I picked it up -- but if it wasn't so brief, I would have definitely put it down. In short, I like what its attempting more than what it does.

That said, my friend loves it, so who knows, maybe its me. So far, my reading year hasn't been amazing, but the books on my queue now are all exciting to me, so hoping to turn this around !
]]> Mild Vertigo 62043762 Mild Vertigo explores the dizzying inability to locate oneself in the endless stream of minutiae that make up a life confined to the home, where both everything and nothing happens.

With shades of Clarice Lispector, Mavis Gallant and Lucy Ellman, this late-period novel by the esteemed novelist, essayist, and film and literary critic Mieko Kanai - whose often dark and cynical work occupies something of a cult place within the Japanese canon - is a disconcerting and astute portrait of life in late-stage capitalist society.]]> 176 Mieko Kanai 1804270385 Nate 0 to-read 3.52 1997 Mild Vertigo
author: Mieko Kanai
name: Nate
average rating: 3.52
book published: 1997
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Clown 69091 272 Heinrich Böll 014018726X Nate 0 to-read 4.08 1963 The Clown
author: Heinrich Böll
name: Nate
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1963
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Gliff 203164415 From a literary master, a moving and genre-bending story about our era-spanning search for meaning and knowing.

An uncertain near-future. A story of new boundaries drawn between people daily. A not-very brave new world.

Add two children. And a horse.

From a Scottish word meaning a transient moment, a shock, a faint glimpse, Gliff explores how and why we endeavour to make a mark on the world. In a time when western industry wants to reduce us to algorithms and data—something easily categorizable and predictable—Smith shows us why our humanity, our individual complexities, matter more than ever.]]> 288 Ali Smith 0593701569 Nate 0 to-read 3.95 2024 Gliff
author: Ali Smith
name: Nate
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Ice 636223 158 Anna Kavan 0720612683 Nate 0 to-read, up-next 3.70 1967 Ice
author: Anna Kavan
name: Nate
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1967
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: to-read, up-next
review:

]]> The World of Yesterday 629429 The World of Yesterday, mailed to his publisher a few days before Stefan Zweig took his life in 1942, has become a classic of the memoir genre. Originally titled “Three Lives,� the memoir describes Vienna of the late Austro-Hungarian Empire, the world between the two world wars and the Hitler years.

Translated from the German by Benjamin W. Huebsch and Helmut Ripperger; with an introduction by Harry Zohn, 34 illustrations, a chronology of Stefan Zweig’s life and a new bibliography, by Randolph Klawiter, of works by and about Stefan Zweig in English.

“The best single memoir of Old Vienna by any of the city’s native artists.� � Clive James

“A book that should be read by anyone who is even slightly interested in the creative imagination and the intellectual life, the brute force of history upon individual lives, the possibility of culture and, quite simply, what it meant to be alive between 1881 and 1942.� � The Guardian

“It is not so much a memoir of a life as it is the memento of an age.� � The New Republic]]> 455 Stefan Zweig 0803252242 Nate 0 to-read 4.48 1942 The World of Yesterday
author: Stefan Zweig
name: Nate
average rating: 4.48
book published: 1942
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Eleven 385077 Contains:
-The Snail-Watcher
-The Birds Poised to Fly
-The Terrapin
-When the Fleet was in at Mobile
-The Quest for "Blank Claveringi"
-The Cries of Love
-Mrs. Afton, Among Thy Green Braes
-The Heroine
-Another Bridge to Cross
-The Barbarians
-The Empty Birdcage]]> 169 Patricia Highsmith 087113327X Nate 0 to-read 3.88 1970 Eleven
author: Patricia Highsmith
name: Nate
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1970
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Museum of Innocence 6282753
So begins the new novel, his first since winning the Nobel Prize, from the universally acclaimed author of Snow and My Name Is Red.

It is 1975, a perfect spring in Istanbul. Kemal, scion of one of the city’s wealthiest families, is about to become engaged to Sibel, daughter of another prominent family, when he encounters Füsun, a beautiful shopgirl and a distant relation. Once the long-lost cousins violate the code of virginity, a rift begins to open between Kemal and the world of the Westernized Istanbul bourgeosie—a world, as he lovingly describes it, with opulent parties and clubs, society gossip, restaurant rituals, picnics, and mansions on the Bosphorus, infused with the melancholy of decay—until finally he breaks off his engagement to Sibel. But his resolve comes too late.

For eight years Kemal will find excuses to visit another Istanbul, that of the impoverished backstreets where Füsun, her heart now hardened, lives with her parents, and where Kemal discovers the consolations of middle-class life at a dinner table in front of the television. His obsessive love will also take him to the demimonde of Istanbul film circles (where he promises to make Füsun a star), a scene of seedy bars, run-down cheap hotels, and small men with big dreams doomed to bitter failure. In his feckless pursuit, Kemal becomes a compulsive collector of objects that chronicle his lovelorn progress and his afflicted heart’s reactions: anger and impatience, remorse and humiliation, deluded hopes of recovery, and daydreams that transform Istanbul into a cityscape of signs and specters of his beloved, from whom now he can extract only meaningful glances and stolen kisses in cars, movie houses, and shadowy corners of parks. A last change to realize his dream will come to an awful end before Kemal discovers that all he finally can possess, certainly and eternally, is the museum he has created of his collection, this map of a society’s manners and mores, and of one man’s broken heart.

A stirring exploration of the nature of romantic attachment and of the mysterious allure of collecting, The Museum of Innocence also plumbs the depths of an Istanbul half Western and half traditional—its emergent modernity, its vast cultural history. This is Orhan Pamuk’s greatest achievement.]]> 536 Orhan Pamuk 0307266761 Nate 0 abandoned-dnf 3.76 2008 The Museum of Innocence
author: Orhan Pamuk
name: Nate
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/12
shelves: abandoned-dnf
review:

]]> Herscht 07769 208511278 406 László Krasznahorkai 0811231534 Nate 0 abandoned-dnf 4.35 2021 Herscht 07769
author: László Krasznahorkai
name: Nate
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/12
shelves: abandoned-dnf
review:

]]> The Magic Mountain 88077
The Magic Mountain is a monumental work of erudition and irony, sexual tension and intellectual ferment, a book that pulses with life in the midst of death.]]> 706 Thomas Mann Nate 0 currently-reading 4.12 1924 The Magic Mountain
author: Thomas Mann
name: Nate
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1924
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/12
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers' Guild]]> 65923975

Unbeknownst to David, in these nondescript lands, once theatres of wars and revolutions, Death leads the dance. When an existence ends, the Wheel of Life recycles its soul and hurls it back into the world as microbe, human or wild animal, sometimes in the past, sometimes in the future. Only once a year do Death and the living observe a temporary truce, during a gargantuan three-day feast where gravediggers gorge themselves on food, libations and language, presided over by the village mayor.
Brimming with Mathias Enard's characteristic wit and encyclopaedic brilliance, The Annual Banquet of the Gravedigger's Guild is a riotous novel where the edges between past and present are constantly dissolving against a Rabelaisian backdrop of excess - and a paradoxically macabre paean to life's inexhaustible richness.]]> 496 Mathias Énard 1804270598 Nate 0 currently-reading 3.75 2020 The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers' Guild
author: Mathias Énard
name: Nate
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/12
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei: How a Chinese Poem is Translated]]> 235926 53 Eliot Weinberger 0918825148 Nate 4
But my favorite part is the postscript , which leaves the format of the essay , and in two pages does an almost Borges esque parable that in my opinion, was mind blowing.

(Edit: the postscript is in the second edition of the book, with the added title “and more ways …�) ]]> 4.21 1987 Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei: How a Chinese Poem is Translated
author: Eliot Weinberger
name: Nate
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1987
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/09
date added: 2025/03/09
shelves:
review:
Like everything I’ve read by Weinberger , this is an absolute treat.

But my favorite part is the postscript , which leaves the format of the essay , and in two pages does an almost Borges esque parable that in my opinion, was mind blowing.

(Edit: the postscript is in the second edition of the book, with the added title “and more ways …�)
]]> My Struggle: Book Four 23164960 485 Karl Ove KnausgĂĄrd 0914671170 Nate 3
My friend told me to skip book 3. So I guess this means there are two in a row that are duds? I still might attempt book 5 at a later date � but this was surely disappointing. I do know people who found it funny and liked it ; but personally wasn’t for me. (Writing was good enough to finish the book at least). ]]> 4.25 2010 My Struggle: Book Four
author: Karl Ove KnausgĂĄrd
name: Nate
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/01
date added: 2025/03/04
shelves:
review:
How the writer of the first two excellent volumes did this one is a complete mystery to me. Though it’s still filled with evocative and poetic prose , it’s essentially 500+ pages of questionable and at times, offensive almost misogynistic horniness. I understand his motivation as a writer to be fearlessly honest ; but I’m not sure I gained anything by peaking into his 18 year old head. Also, since this is supposed to put us in the late teenage/early adult years , it ends up skipping out the moments I loved from volumes one and two � the essayistic digressions and casual philosophies of the mundane that I found so incredibly charming and heartwarming.

My friend told me to skip book 3. So I guess this means there are two in a row that are duds? I still might attempt book 5 at a later date � but this was surely disappointing. I do know people who found it funny and liked it ; but personally wasn’t for me. (Writing was good enough to finish the book at least).
]]> Dangling Man 9873 191 Saul Bellow 0140189351 Nate 0 to-read 3.52 1944 Dangling Man
author: Saul Bellow
name: Nate
average rating: 3.52
book published: 1944
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Hummingbird Salamander 53359447 Annihilation, a brilliant speculative thriller of dark conspiracy, endangered species, and the possible end of all things.

Security consultant “Jane Smith� receives an envelope with a key to a storage unit that holds a taxidermied hummingbird and clues leading her to a taxidermied salamander. Silvina, the dead woman who left the note, is a reputed ecoterrorist and the daughter of an Argentine industrialist. By taking the hummingbird from the storage unit, Jane sets in motion a series of events that quickly spin beyond her control.

Soon, Jane and her family are in danger, with few allies to help her make sense of the true scope of the peril. Is the only way to safety to follow in Silvina’s footsteps? Is it too late to stop? As she desperately seeks answers about why Silvina contacted her, time is running out—for her and possibly for the world.

Hummingbird Salamander is Jeff VanderMeer at his brilliant, cinematic best, wrapping profound questions about climate change, identity, and the world we live in into a tightly plotted thriller full of unexpected twists and elaborate conspiracy.]]> 351 Jeff VanderMeer 0374173540 Nate 0 to-read 3.23 2021 Hummingbird Salamander
author: Jeff VanderMeer
name: Nate
average rating: 3.23
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Authority (Southern Reach, #2)]]> 18077769 The bone-chilling, hair-raising second installment of the Southern Reach Trilogy

After thirty years, the only human engagement with Area X—a seemingly malevolent landscape surrounded by an invisible border and mysteriously wiped clean of all signs of civilization—has been a series of expeditions overseen by a government agency so secret it has almost been forgotten: the Southern Reach. Following the tumultuous twelfth expedition chronicled in Annihilation, the agency is in complete disarray.

John RodrĂ­guez (aka "Control") is the Southern Reach's newly appointed head. Working with a distrustful but desperate team, a series of frustrating interrogations, a cache of hidden notes, and hours of profoundly troubling video footage, Control begins to penetrate the secrets of Area X. But with each discovery he must confront disturbing truths about himself and the agency he's pledged to serve.

In Authority, the second volume of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy, Area X's most disturbing questions are answered . . . but the answers are far from reassuring.]]> 341 Jeff VanderMeer 0374104107 Nate 4 3.54 2014 Authority (Southern Reach, #2)
author: Jeff VanderMeer
name: Nate
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/06
date added: 2025/02/06
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Midlife: Humanity's Secret Weapon]]> 61088681
This was a question that intrigued psychoanalyst Carl Jung, who observed that if a culture is to maintain its deepest, profoundest roots while moving forward to embrace the challenges of historical and technological change, it needs to find an equilibrium between the energy, vigour and creativity of those in the ego-driven first half of life and the experience, dignity and wisdom of those in the second. But to make it to that second half of life, we need to traverse the dreaded 'middle years', when so many of us find ourselves discontent with our jobs, unhappy in our relationships and lamenting our fetishized youths.

Drawing on history, psychology, science and literature, Jamieson shows just how ubiquitous, and crucial, the 'midlife crisis' is, and the devastating consequences for society at large if we continue to regard it as something we can, and should, avoid.]]> 126 Andrew Jamieson 1912559390 Nate 4
Jungian analysis on the midlife crises mixed with biographical sketches of historical figures who found success after their middle years.

Introductory chapter is worth reading on its own if one doesn’t feel like the entire (slim) book. ]]> 3.86 Midlife: Humanity's Secret Weapon
author: Andrew Jamieson
name: Nate
average rating: 3.86
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/31
date added: 2025/02/05
shelves:
review:
Slim, dense, and extremely nourishing to this reader in his early/mid 40s !!!

Jungian analysis on the midlife crises mixed with biographical sketches of historical figures who found success after their middle years.

Introductory chapter is worth reading on its own if one doesn’t feel like the entire (slim) book.
]]> The Little Prince 157993
Few stories are as widely read and as universally cherished by children and adults alike as The Little Prince, presented here in a stunning new translation with carefully restored artwork. The definitive edition of a worldwide classic, it will capture the hearts of readers of all ages.]]> 96 Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 0152023984 Nate 5 all-time-favorites Re-read Jan 2025:

Second read for a screening I'm hosting. Going to screen My Dinner With Andre and talk about its connections to this. My first read in 2020 took a few slow days. This read was a bit under an hour. Still, its impossible not to put it down multiple times to hold back sobs (when there were people nearby), and at the end, to sob uncontrollably when there weren't.

What makes ones sob at a book like this, one so beautiful and captivating? Somehow this puts me back in the space I was once was, perhaps as a young child (or maybe it just puts me in the space I imagine that was ?) Its so open eyed and curious and wonderful; and the end is somewhere between a tragedy and a touching remembrance. (The ambiguity of the ending is striking). There's a sense I had of reading this book that at some point in my life, I lost something important on my path; and if I had held on to it, I'd be a different, wiser person.

That something I think is hard to put into words, but it is expressed elegantly in this story, and the one could say the simplest word for it would be "innocence" -- which really means the things that Saint-Expuréry states over and over as aspects of childhood as opposed to adulthood. Innocence is seeing the real meaning of the drawing on page one, instead of its outline, as "grown ups" do.

But I am being too hard on myself, for this innocence is something we all inevitably have to let go of from time to time. And at least I am not like the serious man on the planet who spends his days accounting. (Though I have indeed visited there, and maybe have visited all the planets the prince sees).

Or maybe the reminder of innocence isn't what created the tears. Perhaps what moves me to tears when reading this is that it expresses the idea of love so effortlessly -- the idea that to love something is to be tamed by that which we love.

I can relate to that powerful description of love -- and that's what made me cry uncontrollably.

Some quotes I wrote down:

"in the face of overpowering mystery, you don't dare disobey"

"anything essential is invisible to the eye."

thoughts on money : "amusing and even a little poetic. But not very serious."

And this quote from a benevolent king, who expects his commands to be followed, and therefore only makes "reasonable" ones (such as waiting til evening to command the sun to set):

"If I were to command a general to turn into a seagull, and if the general did not obey, that would not be the general's fault, it would be mine."

I found this final quote to express how I feel in our second era of Trump (which is already exhausting just a week into it). The duty to resist the far right's commands of us, especially their commands of misinformation and acquiescence, going so far as to sue a tv network for interviewing the opposition. This quote is such a simple reminder that if they expect us to follow blindly, we must remember they are at fault for making unreasonable asks. And whether a refusal to accept their horrible commands is ethical or not (and it is ethical), the real reason to refuse is simply because it is right to refuse. Trump is a pathetic version of the king that does not appear in the book -- he is the version of the king who would ask the sun to set at noon and expect it to. We must never allow him to meet his impossible expectations of us.

***

I first read The Little Prince during Trump's first term, but my reading then was influenced by the pandemic, as it was very early into the lockdown that I sat down with the book. Below is the review I wrote then, unedited except for a date stamp (and I have yet to re-read it myself)

***

March 24, 2020

Read this for the first time last weekend. Honestly can't believe I haven't before. Incredible; and a perfect read for right now. (I think another great one would be Don Quixote).

I know so many friends who love it; but I took for granted that it'll always be there; and I didn't expect it to have such a profound effect on me. Amazing, gentle language; dreamy storyline; affirming yet real philosophy; funny; melancholic; etc etc etc. Its rumination on love and loyalty are incredible. Especially the passage where the fox defines the feeling of being "tamed" to the Prince. I'd put the writing up there with W.G. Sebald or any of my other favorites. And even if the writing wasn't great; the art would be treasure enough.

I jotted a couple phrases down in my notebook. My favorites:

"Its mysterious the land of tears."

"Anything essential is invisible to the eyes."

I hope everyone is finding these moments safe and is able to take time for their families or loved ones. I live alone, have usually enjoyed solitude, but have never experienced this type of it, which is of course a challenge. Still, its been amazing to talk to my family more regularly, and to check in on what I find important in life.

All the love,
Nate]]> 4.32 1943 The Little Prince
author: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
name: Nate
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1943
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/26
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves: all-time-favorites
review:
Re-read Jan 2025:

Second read for a screening I'm hosting. Going to screen My Dinner With Andre and talk about its connections to this. My first read in 2020 took a few slow days. This read was a bit under an hour. Still, its impossible not to put it down multiple times to hold back sobs (when there were people nearby), and at the end, to sob uncontrollably when there weren't.

What makes ones sob at a book like this, one so beautiful and captivating? Somehow this puts me back in the space I was once was, perhaps as a young child (or maybe it just puts me in the space I imagine that was ?) Its so open eyed and curious and wonderful; and the end is somewhere between a tragedy and a touching remembrance. (The ambiguity of the ending is striking). There's a sense I had of reading this book that at some point in my life, I lost something important on my path; and if I had held on to it, I'd be a different, wiser person.

That something I think is hard to put into words, but it is expressed elegantly in this story, and the one could say the simplest word for it would be "innocence" -- which really means the things that Saint-Expuréry states over and over as aspects of childhood as opposed to adulthood. Innocence is seeing the real meaning of the drawing on page one, instead of its outline, as "grown ups" do.

But I am being too hard on myself, for this innocence is something we all inevitably have to let go of from time to time. And at least I am not like the serious man on the planet who spends his days accounting. (Though I have indeed visited there, and maybe have visited all the planets the prince sees).

Or maybe the reminder of innocence isn't what created the tears. Perhaps what moves me to tears when reading this is that it expresses the idea of love so effortlessly -- the idea that to love something is to be tamed by that which we love.

I can relate to that powerful description of love -- and that's what made me cry uncontrollably.

Some quotes I wrote down:

"in the face of overpowering mystery, you don't dare disobey"

"anything essential is invisible to the eye."

thoughts on money : "amusing and even a little poetic. But not very serious."

And this quote from a benevolent king, who expects his commands to be followed, and therefore only makes "reasonable" ones (such as waiting til evening to command the sun to set):

"If I were to command a general to turn into a seagull, and if the general did not obey, that would not be the general's fault, it would be mine."

I found this final quote to express how I feel in our second era of Trump (which is already exhausting just a week into it). The duty to resist the far right's commands of us, especially their commands of misinformation and acquiescence, going so far as to sue a tv network for interviewing the opposition. This quote is such a simple reminder that if they expect us to follow blindly, we must remember they are at fault for making unreasonable asks. And whether a refusal to accept their horrible commands is ethical or not (and it is ethical), the real reason to refuse is simply because it is right to refuse. Trump is a pathetic version of the king that does not appear in the book -- he is the version of the king who would ask the sun to set at noon and expect it to. We must never allow him to meet his impossible expectations of us.

***

I first read The Little Prince during Trump's first term, but my reading then was influenced by the pandemic, as it was very early into the lockdown that I sat down with the book. Below is the review I wrote then, unedited except for a date stamp (and I have yet to re-read it myself)

***

March 24, 2020

Read this for the first time last weekend. Honestly can't believe I haven't before. Incredible; and a perfect read for right now. (I think another great one would be Don Quixote).

I know so many friends who love it; but I took for granted that it'll always be there; and I didn't expect it to have such a profound effect on me. Amazing, gentle language; dreamy storyline; affirming yet real philosophy; funny; melancholic; etc etc etc. Its rumination on love and loyalty are incredible. Especially the passage where the fox defines the feeling of being "tamed" to the Prince. I'd put the writing up there with W.G. Sebald or any of my other favorites. And even if the writing wasn't great; the art would be treasure enough.

I jotted a couple phrases down in my notebook. My favorites:

"Its mysterious the land of tears."

"Anything essential is invisible to the eyes."

I hope everyone is finding these moments safe and is able to take time for their families or loved ones. I live alone, have usually enjoyed solitude, but have never experienced this type of it, which is of course a challenge. Still, its been amazing to talk to my family more regularly, and to check in on what I find important in life.

All the love,
Nate
]]> Perspective(s) 211934923 A pulse-quickening murder mystery set in Renaissance Florence by the renowned author of HHhH.

As dawn breaks over the city of Florence on New Year’s Day 1557, Jacopo da Pontormo is discovered lying on the floor of a church, stabbed through the heart. Above him are the frescoes he labored over for more than a decade—masterpieces all, rivaling the works of Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel. When guards search his quarters, they find an obscene painting of Venus and Cupid—with the face of Venus replaced by that of Maria de� Medici, the Duke of Florence’s oldest daughter. The city erupts in chaos.

Who could have committed these murder and lèse-majesté? Giorgio Vasari, the great art historian, is picked to lead the investigation. Letters start to fly back and forth—between Maria and her aunt Catherine de� Medici, the queen of France; between Catherine and the scheming Piero Strozzi; and between Vasari and Michelangelo—carrying news of political plots and speculations about the identity of Pontormo’s killer. The truth, when it comes to light, is as shocking as the bold new artworks that have made Florence the red-hot center of European art and intrigue.

Bursting with characters and historical color, Laurent Binet’s Perspective(s) is a whodunit like no other—a labyrinthine murder mystery that shows us Renaissance Florence as we’ve never seen it before. This is a dark, dazzling, unforgettable read.]]> 272 Laurent Binet 0374614601 Nate 0 to-read 3.97 2023 Perspective(s)
author: Laurent Binet
name: Nate
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/24
shelves: to-read
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]]> Elena Knows 56802275 A unique tale that interweaves crime fiction with intimate tales of morality and search for individual freedom.

After Rita is found dead in the bell tower of the church she used to attend, the official investigation into the incident is quickly closed. Her sickly mother is the only person still determined to find the culprit. Chronicling a difficult journey across the suburbs of the city, an old debt and a revealing conversation, Elena Knows unravels the secrets of its characters and the hidden facets of authoritarianism and hypocrisy in our society.]]> 143 Claudia Piñeiro Nate 0 to-read 4.09 2007 Elena Knows
author: Claudia Piñeiro
name: Nate
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/18
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Forgery 59736712 120 Ave Barrera Nate 0 to-read 3.87 2013 The Forgery
author: Ave Barrera
name: Nate
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Angels & Saints: With a Guide to the Illustrations by Mary Wellesley]]> 50922731
From a litany of angelic voices, Weinberger’s lyrical meditation then turns to the earthly counterparts, the saints, their lives retold in a series of vibrant and playful capsule biographies, followed by a glimpse of the afterlife.

Threaded throughout Angels & Saints are the glorious illuminated grid poems by the eighteenth-century Benedictine monk Hrabanus Maurus. These astonishingly complex, proto-“concrete� poems are untangled in a lucid afterword by the medieval scholar and historian Mary Wellesley.]]> 160 Eliot Weinberger 0811229866 Nate 0 to-read 4.10 2020 Angels & Saints: With a Guide to the Illustrations by Mary Wellesley
author: Eliot Weinberger
name: Nate
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[City of Saints and Madmen (Ambergris, #1)]]> 230852 City of Saints and Madmen, Jeff VanderMeer has reinvented the literature of the fantastic. You hold in your hands an invitation to a place unlike any you’ve ever visited–an invitation delivered by one of our most audacious and astonishing literary magicians.

City of elegance and squalor. Of religious fervor and wanton lusts. And everywhere, on the walls of courtyards and churches, an incandescent fungus of mysterious and ominous origin. In Ambergris, a would-be suitor discovers that a sunlit street can become a killing ground in the blink of an eye. An artist receives an invitation to a beheading–and finds himself enchanted. And a patient in a mental institution is convinced he’s made up a city called Ambergris, imagined its every last detail, and that he’s really from a place called Chicago.�

By turns sensuous and terrifying, filled with exotica and eroticism, this interwoven collection of stories, histories, and “eyewitness� reports invokes a universe within a puzzlebox where you can lose–and find–yourself again.]]> 704 Jeff VanderMeer 0553383574 Nate 0 to-read 3.87 2002 City of Saints and Madmen (Ambergris, #1)
author: Jeff VanderMeer
name: Nate
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2002
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Borne (Borne, #1) 31451186
At first, Borne looks like nothing at all—just a green lump that might be a Company discard. The Company, although severely damaged, is rumoured to still make creatures and send them to distant places that have not yet suffered Collapse.

Borne somehow reminds Rachel of the island nation of her birth, now long lost to rising seas. She feels an attachment she resents; attachments are traps, and in this world any weakness can kill you. Yet when she takes Borne to her subterranean sanctuary, the Balcony Cliffs, Rachel convinces her lover, Wick, not to render Borne down to raw genetic material for the drugs he sells—she cannot break that bond.

Wick is a special kind of supplier, because the drug dealers in the city don’t sell the usual things. They sell tiny creatures that can be swallowed or stuck in the ear, and that release powerful memories of other people’s happier times or pull out forgotten memories from the user’s own mind—or just produce beautiful visions that provide escape from the barren, craterous landscapes of the city.

Against his better judgment, out of affection for Rachel or perhaps some other impulse, Wick respects her decision. Rachel, meanwhile, despite her loyalty to Wick, knows he has kept secrets from her. Searching his apartment, she finds a burnt, unreadable journal titled “Mord,� a cryptic reference to the Magician (a rival drug dealer) and evidence that Wick has planned the layout of the Balcony Cliffs to match the blueprint of the Company building. What is he hiding? Why won’t he tell her about what happened when he worked for the Company?]]> 323 Jeff VanderMeer 0374115249 Nate 0 to-read 3.93 2017 Borne (Borne, #1)
author: Jeff VanderMeer
name: Nate
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/13
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Strange Bird: A Borne Story (Borne, #1.5)]]> 35654201 The Strange Birdâ€Äě°ů´Çłľ New York Times bestselling novelist Jeff VanderMeer—is a novella-length digital original that expands and weaves deeply into the world of his “thorough marvelâ€�* of a novel, Borne.

The Strange Bird is a new kind of creature, built in a laboratory—she is part bird, part human, part many other things. But now the lab in which she was created is under siege and the scientists have turned on their animal creations. Flying through tunnels, dodging bullets, and changing her colors and patterning to avoid capture, the Strange Bird manages to escape.

But she cannot just soar in peace above the earth. The sky itself is full of wildlife that rejects her as one of their own, and also full of technology—satellites and drones and other detritus of the human civilization below that has all but destroyed itself. And the farther she flies, the deeper she finds herself in the orbit of the Company, a collapsed biotech firm that has populated the world with experiments both failed and successful that have outlived the corporation a pack of networked foxes, a giant predatory bear. But of the many creatures she encounters with whom she bears some kind of kinship, it is the humans—all of them now simply scrambling to survive—who are the most insidious, who still see her as simply something to possess, to capture, to trade, to exploit. Never to understand, never to welcome home.

With The Strange Bird, Jeff VanderMeer has done more than add another layer, a new chapter, to his celebrated novel Borne. He has created a whole new perspective on the world inhabited by Rachel and Wick, the Magician, Mord, and Borne—a view from above, of course, but also a view from deep inside the mind of a new kind of creature who will fight and suffer and live for the tenuous future of this world.

Praise for Borne

*“Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy was an ever-creeping map of the apocalypse; with Borne he continues his investigation into the malevolent grace of the world, and it's a thorough marvel.� —Colson Whitehead

“VanderMeer is that rare novelist who turns to nonhumans not to make them approximate us as much as possible but to make such approximation impossible. All of this is magnified a hundredfold in Borne . . . Here is the story about biotech that VanderMeer wants to tell, a vision of the nonhuman not as one fixed thing, one fixed destiny, but as either peaceful or catastrophic, by our side or out on a rampage as our behavior dictates—for these are our children, born of us and now to be borne in whatever shape or mess we have created. This coming-of-age story signals that eco-fiction has come of age as wilder, more reckless and more breathtaking than previously thought, a wager and a promise that what emerges from the twenty-first century will be as good as any from the twentieth, or the nineteenth.� —Wai Chee Dimock, The New York Times Book Review]]> 96 Jeff VanderMeer 0374714932 Nate 0 to-read 4.15 2017 The Strange Bird: A Borne Story (Borne, #1.5)
author: Jeff VanderMeer
name: Nate
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Our Wives Under the Sea 58659343
Moving through something that only resembles normal life, Miri comes to realize that the life that they had before might be gone. Though Leah is still there, Miri can feel the woman she loves slipping from her grasp.

Our Wives Under The Sea is the debut novel from Julia Armfield, the critically acclaimed author of Salt Slow. It’s a story of falling in love, loss, grief, and what life there is in the deep deep sea.]]> 240 Julia Armfield 152901722X Nate 0 to-read 3.75 2022 Our Wives Under the Sea
author: Julia Armfield
name: Nate
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Concrete 92575
"Certain books—few—assert literary importance instantly, profoundly. This new novel by the internationally praised but not widely known Austrian writer is one of those—a book of mysterious dark beauty . . . . [It] is overwhelming; one wants to read it again, immediately, to re-experience its intricate innovations, not to let go of this masterful work."—John Rechy, Los Angeles Times

"Rudolph is not obstructed by some malfunctions in part of his being—his being itself is a knot. And as Bernhard's narrative proceeds, we begin to register the dimensions of his crisis, its self-consuming circularity . . . . Where rage of this intensity is directed outward, we often find the sociopath; where inward, the suicide. Where it breaks out laterally, onto the page, we sometimes find a most unsettling artistic vision."—Sven Birkerts, The New Republic]]> 156 Thomas Bernhard 0226043983 Nate 0 to-read 4.13 1982 Concrete
author: Thomas Bernhard
name: Nate
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1982
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Burning Earth: An Environmental History of the Last 500 Years]]> 203644918 A paradigm-shifting global survey of how human history has reshaped the planet, and vice versa

Ever since innovations in agriculture vastly expanded production of the staples of food energy, our remarkable achievements in reshaping nature have brought about an overwhelming expansion in the life chances of billions of people. Yet every technological innovation has also empowered humans to exploit each other and the planet with devastating brutality, twinning the stories of environment and of Empire, genocide and eco-cide, as with Spanish silver mining in Peru and British gold mining in South Africa.

After the age of empire, new nations raced to make up lost ground, expanding human freedom at devastating ecological cost. Amrith’s environmental lens provides an essential new way of understanding as a massive reshaping of the earth through the global mobilization of natural resources, those resources including humans themselves. He also makes clear that migration is often a consequence of environmental harm.

Reinterpreting a history previously seen from a Euro-and-anthropocentric viewpoint, Amrith relates in brilliant prose, and on the largest canvas, a magisterial, mind-altering epic - vibrant with stories, characters, vivid images and rich archival resources.]]> 413 Sunil Amrith 0141993871 Nate 0 to-read 4.04 The Burning Earth: An Environmental History of the Last 500 Years
author: Sunil Amrith
name: Nate
average rating: 4.04
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Chronicles, Volume One 14318 "I'd come from a long ways off and had started a long ways down. But now destiny was about to manifest itself. I felt like it was looking right at me and nobody else." So writes Bob Dylan in Chronicles: Volume One, his remarkable book exploring critical junctures in his life and career.

Through Dylan's eyes and open mind, we see Greenwich Village, circa 1961, when he first arrives in Manhattan. Dylan's New York is a magical city of possibilities -- smoky, nightlong parties; literary awakenings; transient loves and unbreakable friendships. Elegiac observations are punctuated by jabs of memories, penetrating and tough. With the book's side trips to New Orleans, Woodstock, Minnesota and points west, Chronicles: Volume One is an intimate and intensely personal recollection of extraordinary times.

By turns revealing, poetical, passionate and witty, Chronicles: Volume One is a mesmerizing window on Bob Dylan's thoughts and influences. Dylan's voice is distinctively American: generous of spirit, engaged, fanciful and rhythmic. Utilizing his unparalleled gifts of storytelling and the exquisite expressiveness that are the hallmarks of his music, Bob Dylan turns Chronicles: Volume One into a poignant reflection on life, and the people and places that helped shape the man and the art.]]> 320 Bob Dylan 0743244583 Nate 0 to-read 3.98 2004 Chronicles, Volume One
author: Bob Dylan
name: Nate
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays]]> 11987 212 Albert Camus Nate 0 to-read, up-next 4.23 1942 The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
author: Albert Camus
name: Nate
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1942
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/10
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review:

]]> Boulder 49236083
La protagonista d'aquesta novel·la és una dona atreta per la solitud com per un imant. Es guanya la vida en un buc, la situació perfecta: una cabina, l'oceà, moltes hores per encara el buit i algún port per conèixer dones. Fins que una la reté, se l'emporta entre les quatre parets d'una casa i l'embarca en la gestació assistida d'una criatura. ¿Què en farà, la maternitat, de l'amant coneguda en un bar?

Working as a cook on a merchant ship, a woman comes to know and love Samsa, a woman who gives her the nickname “Boulder.� When Samsa gets a job in Reykjavik and the couple decides to move there together, Samsa decides that she wants to have a child. She is already 40 and can’t bear to let the opportunity pass her by. Boulder is less enthused, but doesn’t know how to say no―and so finds herself dragged along on a journey that feels as thankless as it is alien.

With motherhood changing Samsa into a stranger, Boulder must decide where her priorities lie, and whether her yearning for freedom can truly trump her yearning for love.

Once again, Eva Baltasar demonstrates her preeminence as a chronicler of queer voices navigating a hostile world―and in prose as brittle and beautiful as an ancient saga.]]> 128 Eva Baltasar 8439736967 Nate 0 to-read 3.89 2020 Boulder
author: Eva Baltasar
name: Nate
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/05
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review:

]]> Mammoth (Triptych, #3) 189187278
This small bomb of a novel, not remotely pastoral, builds to a howling crescendo of social despair, leaving us at the mercy of Eva Baltasar’s wild voice.  Ěý±Ő±Ő> 103 Eva Baltasar 1916751008 Nate 4 3.66 2022 Mammoth (Triptych, #3)
author: Eva Baltasar
name: Nate
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/05
date added: 2025/01/05
shelves:
review:

]]> Mother Night 9592 Librarian note: Alternate cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.

Mother Night is a daring challenge to our moral sense. American Howard W. Campbell, Jr., a spy during World War II, is now on trial in Israel as a Nazi war criminal. But is he really guilty? In this brilliant book rife with true gallows humor, Vonnegut turns black and white into a chilling shade of gray with a verdict that will haunt us all.]]> 282 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. 0385334141 Nate 3 4.23 1961 Mother Night
author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: Nate
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1961
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/20
date added: 2025/01/03
shelves:
review:
Read for a book club and forgot to log. Didn’t love the book. Loved the book club. 5 stars for the dinner and conversation and drinks. 3 stars for the book.
]]> The Return 28007895
When he was twelve, Matar and his family went into political exile. Eight years later Matar's father, a former diplomat and military man turned brave political dissident, was kidnapped from the streets of Cairo by the Libyan government and is believed to have been held in the regime's most notorious prison.  Now, the prisons are empty and little hope remains that Jaballa Matar will be found alive. Yet, as the author writes, hope is "persistent and cunning".    

This book is a profoundly moving family memoir, a brilliant and affecting portrait of a country and a people on the cusp of immense change, and a disturbing and timeless depiction of the monstrous nature of absolute power.]]> 256 Hisham Matar 034580774X Nate 0 to-read 4.15 2016 The Return
author: Hisham Matar
name: Nate
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> My Friends 127488823
The trick time plays is to lull us into the belief that everything lasts forever, and although nothing does, we continue, inside our dream.

One evening, as a young boy growing up in Benghazi, Khaled hears a bizarre short story read aloud on the radio, about a man being eaten alive by a cat. Obsessed by the power of those words—and by their enigmatic author, Hosam Zowa—Khaled eventually embarks on a journey that will take him far from home, to pursue a life of the mind at the University of Edinburgh.

There, thrust into an open society that is light years away from the world he knew in Libya, Khaled begins to change. He attends a protest against the Qaddafi regime in London, only to watch it explode in tragedy. In a flash, Khaled finds himself injured, clinging to life, an exile, unable to leave England, much less return to the country of his birth. To even tell his mother and father back home what he has done, on tapped phone lines, would jeopardize their safety.

When a chance encounter in a hotel brings Khaled face to face with Hosam Zowa, the author of the fateful short story, he is subsumed into the deepest friendship of his life. It is a friendship that not only sustains him, but eventually forces him, as the Arab Spring erupts, to confront agonizing tensions between revolution and safety, family and exile, and how to define his own sense of self against those closest to him.

A devastating meditation on friendship and family, and the ways in which time tests—and frays—those bonds, My Friends is an achingly beautiful work of literature by an author at the peak of his powers.]]> 399 Hisham Matar 081299485X Nate 5 up-next
If I had finished this a couple days earlier, it would have ranked high on my favorite reads from 2024.

Incredible writing. Contemplative and heartbreaking book on exile, politics, and relationships. Beautiful, profound. Both cerebral and emotional.

Very light elements of Sebald, especially in the beginning; it also reminded me of Juan Gabriel Vasquez (who's quoted in the back). Its been a huge pleasure of mine to see Sebald's influence on contemporary writers, and it makes sense as his final novel, Austerlitz, is now 24 years old. There's been enough time for people to submerge into his style without copying it. And so, the stuff now that feels similar is very different than say, Teju Cole or Rachel Cusk. It is his style put into more "conventional" narratives , just like how Kafka's style eventually found its way into writers like Haruki Murakami.

I'm becoming more and more aware that my taste runs into what I'd call "slow literature" or "contemplative literature." Not boring in any sense -- but a tempo that pays attention to detail, that walks around the everyday while telling the story. Environmental literature perhaps? Books with both motion and pauses. For me, its a nearly magical antidote to the social media fast paced life we are encouraged to be on. And I'm convinced that a huge problem is the world right now (for humans at least) is the lack of both wonder and time.

The only reason for a half star ding is from the length. To me, the novel was just a touch too long to sustain its style and emotional arc. However, that might have more to do with my mood than the book. Still, highest recommendation for this incredibly satisfying and rich novel. ]]> 4.31 2024 My Friends
author: Hisham Matar
name: Nate
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/02
date added: 2025/01/03
shelves: up-next
review:
A very strong 4 1/2 stars, rounding up.

If I had finished this a couple days earlier, it would have ranked high on my favorite reads from 2024.

Incredible writing. Contemplative and heartbreaking book on exile, politics, and relationships. Beautiful, profound. Both cerebral and emotional.

Very light elements of Sebald, especially in the beginning; it also reminded me of Juan Gabriel Vasquez (who's quoted in the back). Its been a huge pleasure of mine to see Sebald's influence on contemporary writers, and it makes sense as his final novel, Austerlitz, is now 24 years old. There's been enough time for people to submerge into his style without copying it. And so, the stuff now that feels similar is very different than say, Teju Cole or Rachel Cusk. It is his style put into more "conventional" narratives , just like how Kafka's style eventually found its way into writers like Haruki Murakami.

I'm becoming more and more aware that my taste runs into what I'd call "slow literature" or "contemplative literature." Not boring in any sense -- but a tempo that pays attention to detail, that walks around the everyday while telling the story. Environmental literature perhaps? Books with both motion and pauses. For me, its a nearly magical antidote to the social media fast paced life we are encouraged to be on. And I'm convinced that a huge problem is the world right now (for humans at least) is the lack of both wonder and time.

The only reason for a half star ding is from the length. To me, the novel was just a touch too long to sustain its style and emotional arc. However, that might have more to do with my mood than the book. Still, highest recommendation for this incredibly satisfying and rich novel.
]]> A Short Stay in Hell 11003233
In this haunting existential novella, author, philosopher, and ecologist Steven L. Peck explores a subversive vision of eternity, taking the reader on a journey through the afterlife of a world where everything everyone believed in turns out to be wrong.]]> 110 Steven L. Peck Nate 0 to-read 4.24 2011 A Short Stay in Hell
author: Steven L. Peck
name: Nate
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> McGlue 20949594 Selected for the inaugural Fence Modern Prize in Prose by Rivka Galchen.

Salem, Massachusetts, 1851: McGlue is in the hold, still too drunk to be sure of name or situation or orientation—he may have killed a man. That man may have been his best friend. Intolerable memory accompanies sobriety. A-sail on the high seas of literary tradition, Ottessa Moshfegh gives us a nasty heartless blackguard on a knife-sharp voyage through the fogs of recollection.

They said I've done something wrong? . . . And they've just left me down here to starve. They'll see this inanition and be so damned they'll fall to my feet and pass up hot cross buns slathered in fresh butter and beg I forgive them. All of them . . . : the entire world one by one. Like a good priest I'll pat their heads and nod. I'll dunk my skull into a barrel of gin.

Ottessa Moshfegh was awarded the 2013 Plimpton Discovery Prize for her stories in the Paris Review and a creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She is currently a Wallace Stegner fellow at Stanford, and lives in Oakland, California.
]]> 118 Ottessa Moshfegh 1934200859 Nate 0 to-read 3.33 2014 McGlue
author: Ottessa Moshfegh
name: Nate
average rating: 3.33
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Children's Bach 83817408
follows Dexter and Athena Fox, a husband and wife who live with their two sons in the inner suburbs of early-1980s Melbourne. Dexter is gregarious, opinionated, and old fashioned. Athena is a dutiful wife and mother, stoic yet underestimated. Though their son’s disability strains the family at times, they appear to lead otherwise happy lives.

But when a friend from Dexter’s past resurfaces, she and her cast of beguiling companions reveal another world to Dexter and Athena: a bohemian underground, unbound by routine and driven by desire, where choice seems to exist independent of consequence. And as Athena delves deeper into this other kind of life, the tenuous bonds that hold the Fox family together begin to fray.

Painted on a small canvas and with a subtle musical backdrop, is “a jewel� among Garner’s revered catalog (Ben Lerner), a finely etched masterpiece that weighs the burdens of commitment against the costs of liberation.]]> 176 Helen Garner 0553387413 Nate 0 to-read 3.53 1984 The Children's Bach
author: Helen Garner
name: Nate
average rating: 3.53
book published: 1984
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Sense of an Ending 10746542 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here

By an acclaimed writer at the height of his powers, The Sense of an Ending extends a streak of extraordinary books that began with the best-selling Arthur & George and continued with Nothing to Be Frightened Of and, most recently, Pulse.

This intense novel follows a middle-aged man as he contends with a past he has never much thought about - until his closest childhood friends return with a vengeance, one of them from the grave, another maddeningly present. Tony Webster thought he'd left all this behind as he built a life for himself, and by now his marriage and family and career have fallen into an amicable divorce and retirement. But he is then presented with a mysterious legacy that obliges him to reconsider a variety of things he thought he'd understood all along, and to revise his estimation of his own nature and place in the world.

A novel so compelling that it begs to be read in a single sitting, with stunning psychological and emotional depth and sophistication, The Sense of an Ending is a brilliant new chapter in Julian Barnes's oeuvre.]]> 150 Julian Barnes 0224094157 Nate 4
Its similar to the ending of Chinatown, in that it almost defines the piece of art. In both cases, I initially didn't like the endings, but then reluctantly had to admit to myself that the art wouldn't be as potent without them. (Chinatown's ending is more shocking of course, but I hope you forgive the analogy).

I'm not going to get into specifics, but needless to say, the ending of this book disturbed me completely. It means one of three things:

1) Either our narrator has radically repressed these memories, to the point where even evidence of his transgression eludes him.

2) He is well aware of what happened, but chooses to write this novel in an attempt to clear his name and manipulate others into thinking highly of him. We know from much of the text how self conscious he is, and he makes no secret that he wants to be thought of as a "good person" by both his ex wife, and his first girlfriend.

3) This seems the least likely to me now, though it is also the least disturbing -- we can take what he says at face value; but us readers can see that both his ex and his deceased friend believed our narrator did ....

Going back and re-reading a few key passages, particularly his visit to the family, leads me to believe its either 1 or 2. Both of which disturb me in completely different ways. The idea that we can delude ourselves of our morality is unpleasant. And reading a book by a conman and being conned is equally unsettling.

Whatever the case, its doubly disturbing because his motivation for his actions was misogynistic anger at his girlfriend for:

1) Being more powerful/confident/intelligent than him.
and
2) Not having sex with him.

Even toward the end, his anger at Victoria never subsides, his first thoughts of her are based solely on her aged looks, and he keeps poking and provoking her until she finally brings him face to face with ....

(I don't know why I'm repressing the twist -- probably in case anyone reads this that didn't pick up the book).

After reveal upon reveal, our narrator Tony keeps crossing boundaries, never lets up, is dismissive; and there are other things that hint to his "anti-women" personality which are glossed over -- his relationship with his daughter appears strained, his casual fling in the US, all these other clues as to who he is.

Its interesting to read this now, because one of the last novels I finished had a near opposite problem -- a male protagonist who was forgiven too easily and who the writer clearly identified with.

Sense of the Ending, to me at least, started off as a piece of auto-fiction, in disguise. I just took for granted this was a true story, and didn't realize the twists and turns the second half would take. By the time it became clear this was not autobiographical, I was invested in the narrator and his journey, even though I thought some of his actions seemed a little strange. Perhaps that is yet another reason the book disturbed me so much upon finishing. I feel like I was empathizing with a fairly horrible person for the entire duration, and not only that, but was conned into empathizing with this person.

As such, it is a masterfully written book, in many ways. The prose style is great. The contemplative nature works well. And without the final quarter, I'd still rate it highly, as I love contemplative fiction (of which this is not, though it seems to be). The mystery reveals itself in unexpected ways. The storyline unfolds at a deliberate and unexpected pace. Psychologically rich, with characters who appear completely real -- which is dual-y impressive since Barnes is giving us unreliable narration while having vivid people.

The themes interweave within themselves, continually morph and change and transform, and even subvert the original ideas they bring up. Its a lot to think about and chew on, partly because of the twist, as much as it made me squirm.

This is a strong 4 stars for me, and there's a good chance I'll bump it up to 4.5 upon further reflection.

***

Also -- this book is one of many examples of the internet spoiling things in a way. When I realized the ambiguous twist -- because the twist is so incredibly ambiguous its almost glossed over -- I couldn't stop myself from quickly reading other people's interpretations of the ending -- which supported most of my thoughts, sure, but also demystified them in a way.

I understand the irony of saying this while I write about it; but I do believe an ending like this should be individually sat with, and part of the magic of a narrative like this is wondering and re-reading and thinking about it, rather than having someone else point out the clues that dot the trail.]]> 3.73 2011 The Sense of an Ending
author: Julian Barnes
name: Nate
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/22
date added: 2024/12/22
shelves:
review:
Pretty much impossible to write about this without writing about the last few pages , which flips the entire vibe of the book completely upside down. What was dreamy and soft becomes disturbing and intense.

Its similar to the ending of Chinatown, in that it almost defines the piece of art. In both cases, I initially didn't like the endings, but then reluctantly had to admit to myself that the art wouldn't be as potent without them. (Chinatown's ending is more shocking of course, but I hope you forgive the analogy).

I'm not going to get into specifics, but needless to say, the ending of this book disturbed me completely. It means one of three things:

1) Either our narrator has radically repressed these memories, to the point where even evidence of his transgression eludes him.

2) He is well aware of what happened, but chooses to write this novel in an attempt to clear his name and manipulate others into thinking highly of him. We know from much of the text how self conscious he is, and he makes no secret that he wants to be thought of as a "good person" by both his ex wife, and his first girlfriend.

3) This seems the least likely to me now, though it is also the least disturbing -- we can take what he says at face value; but us readers can see that both his ex and his deceased friend believed our narrator did ....

Going back and re-reading a few key passages, particularly his visit to the family, leads me to believe its either 1 or 2. Both of which disturb me in completely different ways. The idea that we can delude ourselves of our morality is unpleasant. And reading a book by a conman and being conned is equally unsettling.

Whatever the case, its doubly disturbing because his motivation for his actions was misogynistic anger at his girlfriend for:

1) Being more powerful/confident/intelligent than him.
and
2) Not having sex with him.

Even toward the end, his anger at Victoria never subsides, his first thoughts of her are based solely on her aged looks, and he keeps poking and provoking her until she finally brings him face to face with ....

(I don't know why I'm repressing the twist -- probably in case anyone reads this that didn't pick up the book).

After reveal upon reveal, our narrator Tony keeps crossing boundaries, never lets up, is dismissive; and there are other things that hint to his "anti-women" personality which are glossed over -- his relationship with his daughter appears strained, his casual fling in the US, all these other clues as to who he is.

Its interesting to read this now, because one of the last novels I finished had a near opposite problem -- a male protagonist who was forgiven too easily and who the writer clearly identified with.

Sense of the Ending, to me at least, started off as a piece of auto-fiction, in disguise. I just took for granted this was a true story, and didn't realize the twists and turns the second half would take. By the time it became clear this was not autobiographical, I was invested in the narrator and his journey, even though I thought some of his actions seemed a little strange. Perhaps that is yet another reason the book disturbed me so much upon finishing. I feel like I was empathizing with a fairly horrible person for the entire duration, and not only that, but was conned into empathizing with this person.

As such, it is a masterfully written book, in many ways. The prose style is great. The contemplative nature works well. And without the final quarter, I'd still rate it highly, as I love contemplative fiction (of which this is not, though it seems to be). The mystery reveals itself in unexpected ways. The storyline unfolds at a deliberate and unexpected pace. Psychologically rich, with characters who appear completely real -- which is dual-y impressive since Barnes is giving us unreliable narration while having vivid people.

The themes interweave within themselves, continually morph and change and transform, and even subvert the original ideas they bring up. Its a lot to think about and chew on, partly because of the twist, as much as it made me squirm.

This is a strong 4 stars for me, and there's a good chance I'll bump it up to 4.5 upon further reflection.

***

Also -- this book is one of many examples of the internet spoiling things in a way. When I realized the ambiguous twist -- because the twist is so incredibly ambiguous its almost glossed over -- I couldn't stop myself from quickly reading other people's interpretations of the ending -- which supported most of my thoughts, sure, but also demystified them in a way.

I understand the irony of saying this while I write about it; but I do believe an ending like this should be individually sat with, and part of the magic of a narrative like this is wondering and re-reading and thinking about it, rather than having someone else point out the clues that dot the trail.
]]> The Lover 275 117 Marguerite Duras Nate 5
Warrants a re-read. Strong and precise prose, reminiscent (to me at least) of Didion or Ernaux; the latter who I imagine must have been at least partly influenced by this ?]]> 3.79 1984 The Lover
author: Marguerite Duras
name: Nate
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1984
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/15
date added: 2024/12/16
shelves:
review:
4 1/2 stars, rounding up.

Warrants a re-read. Strong and precise prose, reminiscent (to me at least) of Didion or Ernaux; the latter who I imagine must have been at least partly influenced by this ?
]]> Old King 199291752
In the spring of America’s bicentennial, a man named Duane Oshun runs out of gas in Lincoln, Montana, a former mining boomtown. In this outlaw community, Duane joins a logging crew, falls for a waitress, and attempts to befriend his neighbor, a loner named Ted Kaczynski. Though the two men share a fascination with the Old King, an ancient Douglas fir anchoring the valley’s endangered old-growth forest, Kaczynski's violent grievances against modern society will shake the nation and place Duane in grave danger.

Told in four parts sweeping across two decades, Old King establishes Maxim Loskutoff as one of the most inventive and exciting authors of the American west, a writer “endowed with fearless audacity, stunning grace, and gutsy heart� (Nickolas Butler). As Kaczynski’s bombs crescendo to the book’s devastating conclusion, Old King wrestles with the birth of the modern environmental movement, the accelerating dominion of technology in American life, and a new kind of violence that lives next door.]]> 304 Maxim Loskutoff 0393868192 Nate 0 to-read 3.77 2024 Old King
author: Maxim Loskutoff
name: Nate
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Lesser Ruins 204270371 From the author of Reinhardt's Garden and Saint Sebastian's Abyss comes a breathless new novel of delirious obsession.

Bereft after the death of his ailing wife, a retired professor has resumed his life's work—a book that will stand as a towering cathedral to Michel de Montaigne, reframing the inventor of the essay for the modern age. The challenge is the litany of intrusions that bar his wayâ€Äě°ů´Çłľ memories of his past to the nattering of smartphones to his son's relentless desire to make an electronic dance album.

As he sifts through the contents of his desk, his thoughts pulsing and receding in a haze of caffeine, ghosts and grievances spill out across the page. From the community college where he toiled in vain to an artists' colony in the Berkshires, from the endless pleasures of coffee to the finer points of Holocaust art, the professor's memories churn with sculptors, poets, painters, and inventors, all obsessed with escaping both mediocrity and themselves.

Laced with humor as acrid as it is absurd, Lesser Ruins is a spiraling meditation on ambition, grief, and humanity's ecstatic, agonizing search for meaning through art.]]> 296 Mark Haber 156689719X Nate 0 to-read 4.16 2024 Lesser Ruins
author: Mark Haber
name: Nate
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Love Training 119292002 240 Andrés Neuman 1646052684 Nate 5 4.00 Love Training
author: Andrés Neuman
name: Nate
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/06/13
date added: 2024/12/10
shelves:
review:
I don’t read enough poetry to contextualize this ; but I can say these are all quite beautiful , contemplative , and impressionistic. It’s nice also, from a book design perspective, that it contains both the original and the translated versions side by side.
]]> <![CDATA[Languages of Truth: Essays 2003-2020]]> 55271512 Newly collected, revised, and expanded nonfiction--including many texts never previously in print--from the first two decades of the twenty-first century by the Booker Prize-winning, internationally bestselling author

Salman Rushdie is celebrated as a storyteller of the highest order, illuminating truths about our society and culture through his gorgeous, often searing prose. Now, in his latest collection of nonfiction, he brings together insightful and inspiring essays, criticism, and speeches that focus on his relationship with the written word and solidify his place as one of the most original thinkers of our time.

Gathering pieces written between 2003 and 2020, Languages of Truth chronicles Rushdie's intellectual engagement with a period of momentous cultural shifts. Immersing the reader in a wide variety of subjects, he delves into the nature of storytelling as a human need, and what emerges is, in myriad ways, a love letter to literature itself. Rushdie explores what the work of authors from Shakespeare and Cervantes to Samuel Beckett, Eudora Welty, and Toni Morrison mean to him, whether on the page or in person. He delves deep into the nature of "truth," revels in the vibrant malleability of language and the creative lines that can join art and life, and looks anew at migration, multiculturalism, and censorship.

Enlivened on every page by Rushdie's signature wit and dazzling voice, Languages of Truth offers the author's most piercingly analytical views yet on the evolution of literature and culture even as he takes us on an exhilarating tour of his own exuberant and fearless imagination.]]> 368 Salman Rushdie 059313317X Nate 4
Not the first book of essays to do this; but it can feel a bit like an over long “mix tape� or “best of / greatest hits� album rather than its own unified thing.

(I will say that the end has a section saying all pieces were thoroughly revised and none match the original published piece. So at least there was thoughtfulness to making it feel cohesive).

The best essays are about books and literature � Rushdie’s insights are interesting and enthusiastic. They are the musings of an artist who is in awe of other artworks. It’s inspiring. Plus, I love hearing someone glow over Calvino and other favorites of mine. (Tho Rushdie seems to dislike many autofiction writers that I do love).

All of the piece have warmth, humor, and a conversational tone.

Reading the last essay, on the early days of the pandemic, and written before a vaccine was found, was like entering a time capsule. It’s amazing how that type of trauma puts so much mental distance at it � hard to believe we experienced that just four years ago � in a way it feels like it never happened � I feel disassociated from it. (It doesn’t help that much of its reality has been culturally erased by the rewriting of history by the internet, the media, and especially by Trump and his cronies).

Reading this particular essay, which wasn’t even one of the strong ones, put me right back in those moments � a very trippy feeling. The questions, rhe observations, the fear � Though the essay doesn’t comment on this, there’s a strange level of nostalgia for the lock down I can sometimes feel, despite the trauma, and that I’ve heard other people talk of as well. (Mostly about the influx of time , of nature , of slowness , and of utopic thinking).

Thankfully, his piece is on the horrors, and so it shows how bizarre and off base that nostalgia can be.

Eventually, after another five or so years pass, I believe there will be an influx of pandemic art and stories. It is odd how we collectively forget and rewrite these events.

All said and done, one can probably pick and choose what essays they want to sit with , and have a more enjoyable experience than doing the entire thing. But it’s still a four star rating � the strong ones easily make up for the filler.

P.S. Now that I’ve finally read Rushdie, I want to revisit the Curb Your Enthusiasm episode with him haha. ]]> 4.12 2021 Languages of Truth: Essays 2003-2020
author: Salman Rushdie
name: Nate
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/09
date added: 2024/12/10
shelves:
review:
I love reading essays, especially by fiction writers or poets. However , like many essay collections , this one suffers a “bloated ness� � too many essays , some feeling much more minor than other ones. There’s a series of transcribed lectures I could’ve done without, for example. Or intros to art exhibit catalogues. Even though I love reading about art, these seemed much more minor.

Not the first book of essays to do this; but it can feel a bit like an over long “mix tape� or “best of / greatest hits� album rather than its own unified thing.

(I will say that the end has a section saying all pieces were thoroughly revised and none match the original published piece. So at least there was thoughtfulness to making it feel cohesive).

The best essays are about books and literature � Rushdie’s insights are interesting and enthusiastic. They are the musings of an artist who is in awe of other artworks. It’s inspiring. Plus, I love hearing someone glow over Calvino and other favorites of mine. (Tho Rushdie seems to dislike many autofiction writers that I do love).

All of the piece have warmth, humor, and a conversational tone.

Reading the last essay, on the early days of the pandemic, and written before a vaccine was found, was like entering a time capsule. It’s amazing how that type of trauma puts so much mental distance at it � hard to believe we experienced that just four years ago � in a way it feels like it never happened � I feel disassociated from it. (It doesn’t help that much of its reality has been culturally erased by the rewriting of history by the internet, the media, and especially by Trump and his cronies).

Reading this particular essay, which wasn’t even one of the strong ones, put me right back in those moments � a very trippy feeling. The questions, rhe observations, the fear � Though the essay doesn’t comment on this, there’s a strange level of nostalgia for the lock down I can sometimes feel, despite the trauma, and that I’ve heard other people talk of as well. (Mostly about the influx of time , of nature , of slowness , and of utopic thinking).

Thankfully, his piece is on the horrors, and so it shows how bizarre and off base that nostalgia can be.

Eventually, after another five or so years pass, I believe there will be an influx of pandemic art and stories. It is odd how we collectively forget and rewrite these events.

All said and done, one can probably pick and choose what essays they want to sit with , and have a more enjoyable experience than doing the entire thing. But it’s still a four star rating � the strong ones easily make up for the filler.

P.S. Now that I’ve finally read Rushdie, I want to revisit the Curb Your Enthusiasm episode with him haha.
]]> <![CDATA[On the Calculation of Volume I]]> 208511270
Balle is hypnotic and masterful in her remixing of the endless recursive day, creating curious little folds of time and foreshadowings: her flashbacks light up inside the text like old flash bulbs.

The first volume’s gravitational pull―a force inverse to its constriction―has the effect of a strong tranquilizer, but a drug under which your powers of observation only grow sharper and more acute. Give in to the book's logic (its minute movements, its thrilling shifts, its slant wit, its slowing of time) and its spell is utterly intoxicating.

Solvej Balle’s seven-volume novel wrings enthralling and magical new dimensions from time and its hapless, mortal subjects. As one Danish reviewer beautifully put it, Balle’s fiction consists of writing that listens. “Reading her is like being caressed by language itself.”]]> 160 Solvej Balle 0811237257 Nate 0 to-read, up-next 3.90 2020 On the Calculation of Volume I
author: Solvej Balle
name: Nate
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/08
shelves: to-read, up-next
review:

]]> The Ethics of Ambiguity 21119 162 Simone de Beauvoir 080650160X Nate 0 to-read, up-next 4.18 1947 The Ethics of Ambiguity
author: Simone de Beauvoir
name: Nate
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1947
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/08
shelves: to-read, up-next
review:

]]> The Employees 53780642 A workplace novel of the 22nd century

The near-distant future. Millions of kilometres from Earth.

The crew of the Six-Thousand ship consists of those who were born, and those who were created. Those who will die, and those who will not. When the ship takes on a number of strange objects from the planet New Discovery, the crew is perplexed to find itself becoming deeply attached to them, and human and humanoid employees alike find themselves longing for the same things: warmth and intimacy. Loved ones who have passed. Our shared, far-away Earth, which now only persists in memory.

Gradually, the crew members come to see themselves in a new light, and each employee is compelled to ask themselves whether their work can carry on as before � and what it means to be truly alive.

Structured as a series of witness statements compiled by a workplace commission, Ravn’s crackling prose is as chilling as it is moving, as exhilarating as it is foreboding. Wracked by all kinds of longing, The Employees probes into what it means to be human, emotionally and ontologically, while simultaneously delivering an overdue critique of a life governed by work and the logic of productivity.]]> 136 Olga Ravn Nate 0 to-read 3.69 2018 The Employees
author: Olga Ravn
name: Nate
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Creation Lake 207300960 416 Rachel Kushner 1982116528 Nate 4 3.35 2024 Creation Lake
author: Rachel Kushner
name: Nate
average rating: 3.35
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/02
date added: 2024/12/03
shelves:
review:

]]> Satantango 11455485 Satantango is proof that “the devil has all the good times.�

The story of Satantango, spread over a couple of days of endless rain, focuses on the dozen remaining inhabitants of an unnamed isolated hamlet: failures stuck in the middle of nowhere.

Schemes, crimes, infidelities, hopes of escape, and above all trust and its constant betrayal are Krasznahorkai’s meat. “At the center of Satantango,� George Szirtes has said, “is the eponymous drunken dance, referred to here sometimes as a tango and sometimes as a csardas. It takes place at the local inn where everyone is drunk. . . . Their world is rough and ready, lost somewhere between the comic and the tragic, in one small insignificant corner of the cosmos. Theirs is the dance of death.�

“You know,� Mrs. Schmidt, a pivotal character, tipsily confides, “dance is my one weakness.”]]> 274 László Krasznahorkai 0811217345 Nate 0 to-read 4.19 1985 Satantango
author: László Krasznahorkai
name: Nate
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1985
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Outline 40176913
Beginning with the neighbouring passenger on the flight out and his tales of fast boats and failed marriages, the storytellers talk of their loves and ambitions and pains, their anxieties, their perceptions and daily lives. In the stifling heat and noise of the city the sequence of voice begins to weave a complex human tapestry. The more they talk the more elliptical their listener becomes, as she shapes and directs their accounts until certain themes begin to emerge: the experience of loss, the nature of family life, the difficulty of intimacy and the mystery of creativity itself.

Outline is a novel about writing and talking, about self-effacement and self-expression, about the desire to create and the human art of self-portraiture in which that desire finds its universal form.]]> 249 Rachel Cusk 0571346766 Nate 5
Every page, every sentence even, is one you can walk around and explore in, live in.

It is the literary equivalent of a Brian Eno ambient record. A Mark Rothko painting. Literature as space, as contemplation, as ambience.

Upon each reading, the mysteries become more mysterious, but the themes also become more illuminated.

The central question to me, which I don't think I'll ever answer or grasp is:

Is the narrator, Faye, enlightened and zen-like in her observations ? Is that why she rarely interjects?

Or is it a comment on how men (or people in general) talk at, rather than to, one another?

And to me, it is even more intensely radical and provocative, when one considers that this was Cusk's response to the trend of auto-fiction which was huge at the time of publication.

Whereas Knausgaard (who she wrote glowingly about), and all of his influences wrote first person accounts, spilling into the minutia and mundane of their daily lives over long stretches of time, Cusk took the form and zoomed it out to the people she encountered, rather than herself. We learn very little of her life -- and rather than giving a broad biography of growing up, all we see is a small snapshot during a transitory stage in her life, teaching a summer class in a city she has no connection to. It is liminal, rather than biographical.

Also radical to me, is the fact that the characters that do recur are the ones that would be the least interesting (and even most gross) in real life. Namely, the man referred to as her "neighbor" -- who she meets first on her flight, then twice in Athens, on trips he thinks of as dates but she does not. To give so much space in the novel to a man who prioritizes wealth and his car and "trophy wives", and is antithetical to Faye, is such a bold decision to me, and it says a lot about the strength and depth of the ideas in this novel, which is both philosophical and dreamlike, both comforting and critical, both solitary and filled with people.

It is one of the most unique books I've read and hits me straight in the heart. I find it incredibly comforting, thought provoking, and nourishing. I also find it mysterious and funny.

But unlike other novels of this depth, I find it surprisingly "light" and "airy." It is easy to skip across, to not get sucked into, to reflect on rather than sink. It is a smooth, easy read -- though not "quick" or a page turner, but not dense. It might be the only novel I've read has such a mixture of rich profundities and light, casual seeming prose.

Funny enough, the other five people in the book club did not like reading it, and yet kept bringing up passages they loved and insights they gained from the book -- after we all chatted over whisky and nice lighting and music, two of them said they wanted to re-read after our discussion.

Recently, I've called this my favorite book by a living writer, but now I'm convinced its my favorite book period. I like it even more than Sebald, though this is clearly as influenced by his novels as by the autofiction she is subverting and changing.

(For the record, my other favorites are the much different Borges, and the similar but under-read Tabucchi).

***

earlier review from 2023:

Second reading was even more magical than the first reading of it. An absolute favorite of mine.
Notes from my second reading contain mild spoilers, so I'll include them *after* the first review I wrote, a bit less than four years ago, which starts here:

first review from 2019

Phenomenal. Absolutely phenomenal. Crisp, clear, brave prose, with a Sebaldian sense of wandering, and a ghost like silent melancholy which perfectly captures our current collective longing.

***

This writer is something like a contemporary version of WG Sebald, one of the closest stylists I've found to him, although the prose is a bit simpler, and her enquiry perhaps different (but like Sebald, she does seem to be searching for something).

In inhabiting an almost invisible presence in the story, the narrator shows either an Alan Watts zen style bravery of staying "present" and nonjudgemental; or a feminist critique, resigned to be the listener to other people's problems. I'm not sure which is the intention (if either); but I have a feeling its actually both at the same time. Anytime someone presents seemingly contradictory themes as one really excites me. (For example, the David Byrne lyric "Heaven is a place where nothing happens.")

This novel is stunning. Short, but something to be savored. Might not be for "everyone" but most things I love aren't; and like any book with an identity, readers will know fairy quick if they love or dislike it.

I'm very excited to read the other two books in this trilogy. In a small note, I'm so excited that I now know of two contemporary living writers who are destined to become favorites of mine! (Cusk and Ali Smith).

Second review,
which contains mild spoilers: January 7, 2023

Cusk (or "Raye") doesn't narrate any of her own stories until the second to last page, when she speaks of becoming invisible when stranded in Athems on a pervious trip.

The invisibility ties into the entire theme of the novel, which I now believe is about emptying oneself of all personality and expectation, in order to observe life as a way of interacting with it. A style of passivity, which is itself perhaps a reaction to her crumbled marriage.

(The one time she expresses emotion in a dialogue, is to tell her neighbor how much a student's angry criticism had upset her. This is in stark contrast to the description of the student's words, which are rendered without emotion or reaction).

The word "outline" happens twice in the novel, in the first and final chapter, and serves as bookends of sorts. It again seems to point to invisibility, to the lack of personality.

In chapter one:

"The billionaire had been keen to give me the outline of his life story, which had begun unprepossessingly and ending - obviously - with him being the relaxed, well-heeled man who sat across the table from me today."

(We never hear from him again, nor do we hear his outline. Unlike most characters in the novel, he vanishes after just one paragraph, and his chapter is instead about the person referred to as "The neighbor" -- one of the few people to show up at multiple points throughout the story, as a sort of antithesis or opposition to Faye's ideas).

And then in chapter ten (the final chapter). In this quote we again hear the voice of a nameless character who drifts in for a chapter, and becomes the focus. This character is a writing teacher who will take Faye's post, and who shows up in her flat the day Faye is to leave. There are many mirrors here, to the point where I wonder if this new writer is another stand in for Rachel Cusk, a sort of doppleganger. Just as with Cusk's Faye, this new writer talked during the flight to her neighbor, also a man, though the attractions are inverted here. And just like Faye, the new writer describes the conversation.

"He was describing, in other words, what she herself was not: in everything he said about himself, she found in her own nature a corresponding negative. T/his anti-description, for want of a better way of putting it, had made something clear to her by a reverse kind of exposition: while he talked she began to see herself as a shape, an outline, with all the detail filled in around it while the shape itself remained blank. Yet this shape, even while its content remained unknown, gave her for the first time since the incident a sense of who she now was." (The incident being a traumatic mugging)

So the outlines the novel might be referring to are:

1) The stories we hear in each chapter, each section being its own self contained story/essay, in which people speak of their life outlines, which Cusk/Faye later relays in a cerebral, emotionless prose (which is nonetheless calming, profound, and unpredictable. In other words, magical).

2) The shell we inhabit after a life change: a divorce, a trauma, having a family, or more simply, growing into your 40s (as most characters in this book are), and suddenly feeling one's personality dissolve away from one's previous goals and dreams. For as we turn into "adults", the things that once defined our self perceptions (such as ambition, career, goals, creativity, sex, relationships), these things tend to fade, to become routine almost, or to bear different fruit that we had initially envisioned, until we find ourselves in a different reality we once inhabited. (The nature of reality being another major theme in the novel). As pointed out in the recent Netflix documentary "Stutz" -- no amount of success can make us immune from the challenges of simply being alive. (That documentary is directed by a celebrity, about his therapist).

Perhaps it is because of this theme, and of my own attempts at making music, including various sacrifices for the creative passions, and my previous self definition as an "artist" or "musician", that I find myself so riveted by this book, where every sentence is one I want to underline, to copy and paste, to reflect on. In fact, just the other day, I picked it up with a friend and went to a random page to read aloud, to illustrate how mind blowing every page is.

My two experiences reading it were entirely different but just as inspiring and engaging. The first time I read it, it made me want to write prose again, something I hadn't done since a child, and we all know know habits take a long time to develop, but here we are, a few years later, and I finally am writing somewhat regularly, at least. This book and this writer helped awaken my sense of adventure in what novels can be, or can do.

As well, Antonio Tabucchi and WG Sebald, both of who I started reading a bit before discovering Cusk.
In fact, her style, which is just as masterful as either of those two, falls somewhere in between Tabucchi's gentle dreaminess and Sebald's heady observations.

(My journal entry goes on a bit longer, but loses the main thread.)

Highest recommendation. Among my favorite books of all time.]]> 3.75 2014 Outline
author: Rachel Cusk
name: Nate
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/02
date added: 2024/12/02
shelves: autofiction, favorite-new-writers, all-time-favorites
review:
Upon my third reading of this (which was really more of a skimming, for a book club), I am now convinced this is not one of my favorite books of all time, but is my actual favorite.

Every page, every sentence even, is one you can walk around and explore in, live in.

It is the literary equivalent of a Brian Eno ambient record. A Mark Rothko painting. Literature as space, as contemplation, as ambience.

Upon each reading, the mysteries become more mysterious, but the themes also become more illuminated.

The central question to me, which I don't think I'll ever answer or grasp is:

Is the narrator, Faye, enlightened and zen-like in her observations ? Is that why she rarely interjects?

Or is it a comment on how men (or people in general) talk at, rather than to, one another?

And to me, it is even more intensely radical and provocative, when one considers that this was Cusk's response to the trend of auto-fiction which was huge at the time of publication.

Whereas Knausgaard (who she wrote glowingly about), and all of his influences wrote first person accounts, spilling into the minutia and mundane of their daily lives over long stretches of time, Cusk took the form and zoomed it out to the people she encountered, rather than herself. We learn very little of her life -- and rather than giving a broad biography of growing up, all we see is a small snapshot during a transitory stage in her life, teaching a summer class in a city she has no connection to. It is liminal, rather than biographical.

Also radical to me, is the fact that the characters that do recur are the ones that would be the least interesting (and even most gross) in real life. Namely, the man referred to as her "neighbor" -- who she meets first on her flight, then twice in Athens, on trips he thinks of as dates but she does not. To give so much space in the novel to a man who prioritizes wealth and his car and "trophy wives", and is antithetical to Faye, is such a bold decision to me, and it says a lot about the strength and depth of the ideas in this novel, which is both philosophical and dreamlike, both comforting and critical, both solitary and filled with people.

It is one of the most unique books I've read and hits me straight in the heart. I find it incredibly comforting, thought provoking, and nourishing. I also find it mysterious and funny.

But unlike other novels of this depth, I find it surprisingly "light" and "airy." It is easy to skip across, to not get sucked into, to reflect on rather than sink. It is a smooth, easy read -- though not "quick" or a page turner, but not dense. It might be the only novel I've read has such a mixture of rich profundities and light, casual seeming prose.

Funny enough, the other five people in the book club did not like reading it, and yet kept bringing up passages they loved and insights they gained from the book -- after we all chatted over whisky and nice lighting and music, two of them said they wanted to re-read after our discussion.

Recently, I've called this my favorite book by a living writer, but now I'm convinced its my favorite book period. I like it even more than Sebald, though this is clearly as influenced by his novels as by the autofiction she is subverting and changing.

(For the record, my other favorites are the much different Borges, and the similar but under-read Tabucchi).

***

earlier review from 2023:

Second reading was even more magical than the first reading of it. An absolute favorite of mine.
Notes from my second reading contain mild spoilers, so I'll include them *after* the first review I wrote, a bit less than four years ago, which starts here:

first review from 2019

Phenomenal. Absolutely phenomenal. Crisp, clear, brave prose, with a Sebaldian sense of wandering, and a ghost like silent melancholy which perfectly captures our current collective longing.

***

This writer is something like a contemporary version of WG Sebald, one of the closest stylists I've found to him, although the prose is a bit simpler, and her enquiry perhaps different (but like Sebald, she does seem to be searching for something).

In inhabiting an almost invisible presence in the story, the narrator shows either an Alan Watts zen style bravery of staying "present" and nonjudgemental; or a feminist critique, resigned to be the listener to other people's problems. I'm not sure which is the intention (if either); but I have a feeling its actually both at the same time. Anytime someone presents seemingly contradictory themes as one really excites me. (For example, the David Byrne lyric "Heaven is a place where nothing happens.")

This novel is stunning. Short, but something to be savored. Might not be for "everyone" but most things I love aren't; and like any book with an identity, readers will know fairy quick if they love or dislike it.

I'm very excited to read the other two books in this trilogy. In a small note, I'm so excited that I now know of two contemporary living writers who are destined to become favorites of mine! (Cusk and Ali Smith).

Second review,
which contains mild spoilers: January 7, 2023

Cusk (or "Raye") doesn't narrate any of her own stories until the second to last page, when she speaks of becoming invisible when stranded in Athems on a pervious trip.

The invisibility ties into the entire theme of the novel, which I now believe is about emptying oneself of all personality and expectation, in order to observe life as a way of interacting with it. A style of passivity, which is itself perhaps a reaction to her crumbled marriage.

(The one time she expresses emotion in a dialogue, is to tell her neighbor how much a student's angry criticism had upset her. This is in stark contrast to the description of the student's words, which are rendered without emotion or reaction).

The word "outline" happens twice in the novel, in the first and final chapter, and serves as bookends of sorts. It again seems to point to invisibility, to the lack of personality.

In chapter one:

"The billionaire had been keen to give me the outline of his life story, which had begun unprepossessingly and ending - obviously - with him being the relaxed, well-heeled man who sat across the table from me today."

(We never hear from him again, nor do we hear his outline. Unlike most characters in the novel, he vanishes after just one paragraph, and his chapter is instead about the person referred to as "The neighbor" -- one of the few people to show up at multiple points throughout the story, as a sort of antithesis or opposition to Faye's ideas).

And then in chapter ten (the final chapter). In this quote we again hear the voice of a nameless character who drifts in for a chapter, and becomes the focus. This character is a writing teacher who will take Faye's post, and who shows up in her flat the day Faye is to leave. There are many mirrors here, to the point where I wonder if this new writer is another stand in for Rachel Cusk, a sort of doppleganger. Just as with Cusk's Faye, this new writer talked during the flight to her neighbor, also a man, though the attractions are inverted here. And just like Faye, the new writer describes the conversation.

"He was describing, in other words, what she herself was not: in everything he said about himself, she found in her own nature a corresponding negative. T/his anti-description, for want of a better way of putting it, had made something clear to her by a reverse kind of exposition: while he talked she began to see herself as a shape, an outline, with all the detail filled in around it while the shape itself remained blank. Yet this shape, even while its content remained unknown, gave her for the first time since the incident a sense of who she now was." (The incident being a traumatic mugging)

So the outlines the novel might be referring to are:

1) The stories we hear in each chapter, each section being its own self contained story/essay, in which people speak of their life outlines, which Cusk/Faye later relays in a cerebral, emotionless prose (which is nonetheless calming, profound, and unpredictable. In other words, magical).

2) The shell we inhabit after a life change: a divorce, a trauma, having a family, or more simply, growing into your 40s (as most characters in this book are), and suddenly feeling one's personality dissolve away from one's previous goals and dreams. For as we turn into "adults", the things that once defined our self perceptions (such as ambition, career, goals, creativity, sex, relationships), these things tend to fade, to become routine almost, or to bear different fruit that we had initially envisioned, until we find ourselves in a different reality we once inhabited. (The nature of reality being another major theme in the novel). As pointed out in the recent Netflix documentary "Stutz" -- no amount of success can make us immune from the challenges of simply being alive. (That documentary is directed by a celebrity, about his therapist).

Perhaps it is because of this theme, and of my own attempts at making music, including various sacrifices for the creative passions, and my previous self definition as an "artist" or "musician", that I find myself so riveted by this book, where every sentence is one I want to underline, to copy and paste, to reflect on. In fact, just the other day, I picked it up with a friend and went to a random page to read aloud, to illustrate how mind blowing every page is.

My two experiences reading it were entirely different but just as inspiring and engaging. The first time I read it, it made me want to write prose again, something I hadn't done since a child, and we all know know habits take a long time to develop, but here we are, a few years later, and I finally am writing somewhat regularly, at least. This book and this writer helped awaken my sense of adventure in what novels can be, or can do.

As well, Antonio Tabucchi and WG Sebald, both of who I started reading a bit before discovering Cusk.
In fact, her style, which is just as masterful as either of those two, falls somewhere in between Tabucchi's gentle dreaminess and Sebald's heady observations.

(My journal entry goes on a bit longer, but loses the main thread.)

Highest recommendation. Among my favorite books of all time.
]]> Battles in the Desert 55688770
Woven into this coming-of-age saga is the terribly intense love Carlos cherishes for his friend’s young mother, which has the effect of driving the general cruelties further under the reader’s skin. The acclaimed translator Katherine Silver has greatly revised her original translation, enlivening afresh this remarkable work.]]> 80 José Emilio Pacheco 0811230953 Nate 4
As such, it didn’t get the quite focused reading a book of this import deserves (especially considering how well loved it is by Fernanda Melchor, one of my favorite new writers in general, and definitely my favorite living Latin American writer; and it’s place alongside Sergio Pitol, whom I love, and who was a friend of Emilio Pacheco. Both of whom won the Cervantes prize).

For me, it took a few chapters to weave its spell � and if it didn’t blow me away per se, that might be partly due to the context I read it in.

What stood out most were the chapter headings, which have mysterious and evocative titles that read like poems; different from the straightforward aspect of the narrative (what Melchor calls it’s “magical simplicity�) � and of course the ending , a final sentence that it seems the entire book has been building toward, a sentence made my body shake. One of the better final sentences I’ve read; which rivals (another Latin writer) Garcia Marquez’s last sentence in 100 Años.

Finally , since it is hard not to compare it to other Mexican art, it strikes me that it shares stylistic similarities to the Cuoron film Roma � both based in the same neighborhood and both nostalgic pieces about innocence and childhood � tho they are very different in that this one is mostly lower class and Curon’s is upper middle class. ]]> 4.14 1981 Battles in the Desert
author: José Emilio Pacheco
name: Nate
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1981
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/28
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves:
review:
Slimmest of slim novellas, in a beautiful package by New Directions. Picked this up while traveling and read it exclusively riding on my subway rides for two days in NYC, visiting my sister who just moved there; so the reading was punctured by people watching, movement, sounds, confusion, and the collision of people that makes New York so special.

As such, it didn’t get the quite focused reading a book of this import deserves (especially considering how well loved it is by Fernanda Melchor, one of my favorite new writers in general, and definitely my favorite living Latin American writer; and it’s place alongside Sergio Pitol, whom I love, and who was a friend of Emilio Pacheco. Both of whom won the Cervantes prize).

For me, it took a few chapters to weave its spell � and if it didn’t blow me away per se, that might be partly due to the context I read it in.

What stood out most were the chapter headings, which have mysterious and evocative titles that read like poems; different from the straightforward aspect of the narrative (what Melchor calls it’s “magical simplicity�) � and of course the ending , a final sentence that it seems the entire book has been building toward, a sentence made my body shake. One of the better final sentences I’ve read; which rivals (another Latin writer) Garcia Marquez’s last sentence in 100 Años.

Finally , since it is hard not to compare it to other Mexican art, it strikes me that it shares stylistic similarities to the Cuoron film Roma � both based in the same neighborhood and both nostalgic pieces about innocence and childhood � tho they are very different in that this one is mostly lower class and Curon’s is upper middle class.
]]> <![CDATA[Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter]]> 11785454
The first is his aunt Julia, recently divorced and thirteen years older, with whom he begins a secret affair. The second is a manic radio scriptwriter named Pedro Camacho, whose racy, vituperative soap operas are holding the city's listeners in thrall. Pedro chooses young Marito to be his confidant as he slowly goes insane.

Interweaving the story of Marito's life with the ever-more-fevered tales of Pedro Camacho, Vargas Llosa's novel is hilarious, mischievous, and masterful, a classic named one of the best books of the year by the New York Times Book Review.]]> 388 Mario Vargas Llosa Nate 0 to-read 3.96 1977 Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter
author: Mario Vargas Llosa
name: Nate
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1977
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Ixelles 62693929
En dag får Rut höra att det på ett sjukhus ligger en medvetslös pojke som har en inspelning med Mios röst. Hon plockar med darrande händer den ålderdomliga cd-spelaren ur hans ryggsäck. Skivan i den skimrar som guld. Det är Mio som talar på den. Mio som borde vara död. Han säger: ”Det finns tak här där man ser ända ut till havet. Här i biblioteket över ingenting.�

Johannes Anyurus nya roman, den första sedan augustvinnaren De kommer att drunkna i sina mödrars tårar, är en polyfon och vindlande roman om vänskap och längtan, och ett kärleksbrev till fiktion, påhittade liv och bibliotek.]]> 422 Johannes Anyuru 911312174X Nate 0 to-read 3.65 2022 Ixelles
author: Johannes Anyuru
name: Nate
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Magical/Realism: Essays on Music, Memory, Fantasy, and Borders]]> 200706911 From award-winning poet Vanessa Angélica Villarreal comes a brilliant, singular collection of essays that looks to music, fantasy, and pop culture to excavate and reimagine what has been disappeared by the forces of migration and colonialism.   In Magical/Realism, Vanessa Angélica Villarreal offers us an intimate mosaic of migration, violence, and colonial erasure through the lens of her marriage and her experiences navigating American monoculture. As she attempts to recover the truth from the absences and silences within her life, her relationships, and those of her ancestors, Vanessa pieces together her story from the fragments of music, memory, and fantasy that have helped her make sense of it all.    The trauma of remembering gives the collection its unique Each chapter is an attempt to reimagine and re-world what has been lost. In one essay, Vanessa examines the gender performativity of Nirvana and Selena; in another, she offers a radical but crucial racial reading of Jon Snow in Game of Thrones; and throughout the collection, she explores how fantasy can provide healing when grief feels insurmountable. She reflects on the moments of her life that are too painful to remember—her difficult adolescence, her role as the eldest daughter of Mexican immigrants, her divorce—and finds a new way to archive her history and map her future(s), one infused with the hope and joy of fantasy and magical thinking.   By engaging readers in her project of rebuilding narrative, Vanessa broadens our understanding of what memoir and cultural criticism can be. Magical/Realism is a wise, tender, and essential collection that carves a path toward a new way of remembering and telling our stories.]]> 370 Vanessa Angélica Villarreal 0593187148 Nate 0 to-read 4.36 2024 Magical/Realism: Essays on Music, Memory, Fantasy, and Borders
author: Vanessa Angélica Villarreal
name: Nate
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A New Name: Septology VI-VII 58382687 also a painter but lonely and consumed by alcohol. Asle and Asle are doppelgängers � two versions of the same person, two versions of the same life, both grappling with existential questions.

In this final instalment of Jon Fosse’s Septology, the major prose work by â€the Beckett of the twenty-first centuryâ€� (Le Monde), Christmas is approaching. Tradition has it that Ă…sleik and Asle eat lutefisk together, but this year Asle has agreed for the first time to celebrate Christmas with Ă…sleik and his sister, Guro. On Christmas Eve, Ă…sleik, Asle, and the dog Bragi take Ă…sleik’s boat out on the Sygnefjord. Meanwhile, we follow the lives of the two Asles as younger adults in flashbacks: the narrator meets his lifelong love, Ales; joins the Catholic Church; starts exhibiting with Beyer; and can make a living by trying to paint away all the pictures stuck in his mind. After a while, Asle and Ales leave the city and move to the house in Dylgja. The other Asle gets married too, but his wedding ends with a sobbing bride and is followed soon after by a painful breakup.

Written in melodious and hypnotic â€slow proseâ€�, A New Name: Septology VI-VII is a transcendent exploration of the human condition by Jon Fosse, and a radically other reading experience â€� incantatory, hypnotic, and utterly unique.]]> 228 Jon Fosse 1913097722 Nate 5
All of the three novels have incredible writing on religion and ecstasy � my favorite parts of the novel, partly because so few contemporary writers talk of spiritual experience in these non spiritual times, and nearly no writer I’ve read talks about it from a Catholic perspective. My grandmother was Catholic, and though I’m not religious myself I always identify with its symbolism and have struggled with its role in domination/power. It’s nice and refreshing to see a writer talk of the psychedelic experience itself , rather than the politics of it , and do so in a way that is not an argument for or against � simply the perspective of an artist in the midst of grief, who channels his grief through painting and through prayer.

This third volume contains religious passages with more frequency; and also fills in the details of Ales and Ales’s early romance. It contains less trauma than the first two (which dealt with childhood deaths and touched on abuse). I would call this series a “mood piece� � something to be listened to rather than read (I mean that metaphorically). It is a piece of music. And the third volume has my favorite melody and color; although they are all good.

Earlier I wasn’t sure it made sense to split them up into three novels � but I read it like that anyway, with breaks, and now I see they do all have their own mood.

An earlier review I wrote mentioned that I find the books both great and slightly over rated. I do take back the latter � though for me, there were moments of boredom � some of the internal monologue is just a “to do list� of errands � but I don’t quite see this working as well without the boring parts. However, if I’m to compare it to something else that alternates between dull and ecstatic � Proust � I would say this doesn’t hit anywhere near those peaks. I guess this is a long winded way of saying this book isn’t essential to me, but if you’re in the mood, it is a great read, and it would be perfect for a long winter.]]> 4.43 2021 A New Name: Septology VI-VII
author: Jon Fosse
name: Nate
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/13
date added: 2024/11/13
shelves:
review:
My favorite of the trilogy that makes up the Septology.

All of the three novels have incredible writing on religion and ecstasy � my favorite parts of the novel, partly because so few contemporary writers talk of spiritual experience in these non spiritual times, and nearly no writer I’ve read talks about it from a Catholic perspective. My grandmother was Catholic, and though I’m not religious myself I always identify with its symbolism and have struggled with its role in domination/power. It’s nice and refreshing to see a writer talk of the psychedelic experience itself , rather than the politics of it , and do so in a way that is not an argument for or against � simply the perspective of an artist in the midst of grief, who channels his grief through painting and through prayer.

This third volume contains religious passages with more frequency; and also fills in the details of Ales and Ales’s early romance. It contains less trauma than the first two (which dealt with childhood deaths and touched on abuse). I would call this series a “mood piece� � something to be listened to rather than read (I mean that metaphorically). It is a piece of music. And the third volume has my favorite melody and color; although they are all good.

Earlier I wasn’t sure it made sense to split them up into three novels � but I read it like that anyway, with breaks, and now I see they do all have their own mood.

An earlier review I wrote mentioned that I find the books both great and slightly over rated. I do take back the latter � though for me, there were moments of boredom � some of the internal monologue is just a “to do list� of errands � but I don’t quite see this working as well without the boring parts. However, if I’m to compare it to something else that alternates between dull and ecstatic � Proust � I would say this doesn’t hit anywhere near those peaks. I guess this is a long winded way of saying this book isn’t essential to me, but if you’re in the mood, it is a great read, and it would be perfect for a long winter.
]]> <![CDATA[Everybody: A Book About Freedom]]> 55298345
Drawing on her own experiences in protest and alternative medicine, and traveling from Weimar Berlin to the prisons of Joseph McCarthy’s America, Laing grapples with some of the most significant and complicated figures of the past century—among them Nina Simone, Christopher Isherwood, Andrea Dworkin, Sigmund Freud, Susan Sontag, and Malcolm X. Arriving at a moment in which basic bodily rights are once again imperiled, Everybody is an investigation into the forces arranged against freedom and a celebration of how ordinary human bodies can resist oppression and reshape the world.]]> 368 Olivia Laing 0393608778 Nate 4 4.26 2021 Everybody: A Book About Freedom
author: Olivia Laing
name: Nate
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/02
date added: 2024/11/03
shelves:
review:
As with her other work I’ve read ; I thoroughly enjoyed the ideas and writing, but didn’t have my mind blown or find anything thought provoking. But it still is comfort food in a way, for an anxious mind at least; and her ability to weave different biographies together to make a broader point is interesting and impressive.
]]> Women: A Novella 200307455
Sometimes I wonder what it is I could tell you about her for my job here to be done. I am looking for a short­cut. . . .But that would be asking too much from you. It wasn’t you who loved her.

A young writer moves from the country to the city and falls in love with another woman for the very first time. From the start, the relationship is doomed; Finn is nineteen years older, wears men’s clothes, has a cocky smirk of a smile . . . and a long-term girlfriend.

With startling clarity and breathtaking tenderness, Chloe Caldwell writes the story of a love in of nights spent drunkenly hurling a phone against a brick wall; of early mornings hungover in bed, curled up together; of emails and poems exchanged at breakneck speed. In Women, Caldwell lays bare the feverish obsession of addictive love, and asks the what, if anything, can who we love teach us about who we are?

In this beautiful, transcendent, bracingly sexy novella, Caldwell tells a lust-love story that will bring you to your knees. Capturing the feverish heartbreak of Sapphic romance, painting a stark picture of an identity in crisis, and illuminating the exploratory possibilities of queer life, Women is an incandescent novella that brands the heart and sears the soul.]]> 160 Chloé Caldwell 0063387077 Nate 0 to-read 4.01 2014 Women: A Novella
author: Chloé Caldwell
name: Nate
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[I is Another: Septology III-V (Septology, 2)]]> 56245404 247 Jon Fosse 1945492457 Nate 4 to-read
(As opposed to Ferrante's quartet, for example).

I read the first book about a year ago and did love it. Really liked this one also, and am eager to finish the "trilogy" of the septology haha. :D

I will say I haven't been blown away per se, but that could change by the end. Even if not, its highly readable, very warm (even when sad), and contains some of the best writing on religious experiences I've encountered. ]]> 4.49 2020 I is Another: Septology III-V (Septology, 2)
author: Jon Fosse
name: Nate
average rating: 4.49
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/14
date added: 2024/10/14
shelves: to-read
review:
Feels unfair rating or logging this; as I imagine Fosse probably intended this all to be released as one volume?

(As opposed to Ferrante's quartet, for example).

I read the first book about a year ago and did love it. Really liked this one also, and am eager to finish the "trilogy" of the septology haha. :D

I will say I haven't been blown away per se, but that could change by the end. Even if not, its highly readable, very warm (even when sad), and contains some of the best writing on religious experiences I've encountered.
]]> <![CDATA[What We Talk About When We Talk About Love]]> 32451779 Librarian's Note: This is an alternate-cover edition for ISBN 9780679723059

In his second collection, including the iconic and much-referenced title story featured in the Academy Award-winning film Birdman, Carver establishes his reputation as one of the most celebrated short-story writers in American literature—a haunting meditation on love, loss, and companionship, and finding one’s way through the dark.]]> 176 Raymond Carver Nate 4 social-reads-books-clubs-etc
Small snapshots of stories that feel like walking through a photo visit.

I had a less impactful emotional experience reading this than I had with Cathedral; but still appreciated it.

Read this for my book shops book club (voted on by members of the club). Was a nice yin/yang complement to the long sentence novels with flowery language that I normally fall for. ]]> 3.86 1981 What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
author: Raymond Carver
name: Nate
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1981
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/13
date added: 2024/10/14
shelves: social-reads-books-clubs-etc
review:
Review forthcoming. In short:

Small snapshots of stories that feel like walking through a photo visit.

I had a less impactful emotional experience reading this than I had with Cathedral; but still appreciated it.

Read this for my book shops book club (voted on by members of the club). Was a nice yin/yang complement to the long sentence novels with flowery language that I normally fall for.
]]> Nights of Plague 60097027 From the the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature: Part detective story, part historical epic--a bold and brilliant novel that imagines a plague ravaging a fictional island in the Ottoman Empire.

It is April 1900, in the Levant, on the imaginary island of Mingheria--the twenty-ninth state of the Ottoman Empire--located in the eastern Mediterranean between Crete and Cyprus. Half the population is Muslim, the other half are Orthodox Greeks, and tension is high between the two. When a plague arrives--brought either by Muslim pilgrims returning from the Mecca or by merchant vessels coming from Alexandria--the island revolts.

To stop the epidemic, the Ottoman sultan Abdul Hamid II sends his most accomplished quarantine expert to the island--an Orthodox Christian. Some of the Muslims, including followers of a popular religious sect and its leader Sheikh Hamdullah, refuse to take precautions or respect the quarantine. And then a murder occurs.

As the plague continues its rapid spread, the Sultan sends a second doctor to the island, this time a Muslim, and strict quarantine measures are declared. But the incompetence of the island's governor and local administration and the people's refusal to respect the bans doom the quarantine to failure, and the death count continues to rise. Faced with the danger that the plague might spread to the West and to Istanbul, the Sultan bows to international pressure and allows foreign and Ottoman warships to blockade the island. Now the people of Mingheria are on their own, and they must find a way to defeat the plague themselves.

Steeped in history and rife with suspense, Nights of Plague is an epic story set more than one hundred years ago, with themes that feel remarkably contemporary.]]> 683 Orhan Pamuk 0525656898 Nate 0 abandoned-dnf 3.49 2021 Nights of Plague
author: Orhan Pamuk
name: Nate
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/09
shelves: abandoned-dnf
review:

]]> The Castle 333538 Translated and with a preface by Mark Harman

Left unfinished by Kafka in 1922 and not published until 1926, two years after his death, The Castle is the haunting tale of K.’s relentless, unavailing struggle with an inscrutable authority in order to gain access to the Castle. Scrupulously following the fluidity and breathlessness of the sparsely punctuated original manuscript, Mark Harman’s new translation reveals levels of comedy, energy, and visual power, previously unknown to English language readers.]]> 328 Franz Kafka 0805211063 Nate 0 to-read, up-next 3.97 1926 The Castle
author: Franz Kafka
name: Nate
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1926
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/09
shelves: to-read, up-next
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis]]> 2536
Back in Lisbon after sixteen years practicing medicine in Brazil, Ricardo Reis wanders the rain-sodden streets. He longs for the unattainably aristocratic Marcenda, but it is Lydia, the hotel chamber maid who makes and shares his bed. His old friend, the poet Fernando Pessoa, returns to see him, still wearing the suit he was buried in six weeks earlier. It is 1936, the clouds of Fascism are gathering ominously above them, so they talk; a wonderful, rambling discourse on art, truth, poetry, philosophy, destiny and love.]]> 358 José Saramago 1860465021 Nate 0 abandoned-dnf 4.04 1984 The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis
author: José Saramago
name: Nate
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1984
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/09
shelves: abandoned-dnf
review:

]]> Train Dreams 12991188 Train Dreams is an epic in miniature, one of his most evocative and poignant fictions. It is the story of Robert Grainier, a day laborer in the American West at the start of the twentieth century---an ordinary man in extraordinary times. Buffeted by the loss of his family, Grainer struggles to make sense of this strange new world. As his story unfolds, we witness both his shocking personal defeats and the radical changes that transform America in his lifetime. Suffused with the history and landscapes of the American West, this novella captures the disappearance of a distinctly American way of life.]]> 116 Denis Johnson 1250007658 Nate 0 to-read 3.91 2002 Train Dreams
author: Denis Johnson
name: Nate
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2002
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Scaffolding 201826095 The story of two couples who live in the same apartment in north-east Paris almost fifty years apart.

In 2019, Anna, a psychoanalyst, is processing a recent miscarriage. Her husband, David, takes a job in London. Hence, she spends days obsessing over renovating the kitchen while befriending a younger woman called Clémentine who has moved into the building and is part of a radical feminist collective called les colleuses. Meanwhile, in 1972, Florence and Henry are redoing their kitchen. Florence is finishing her degree in psychology while hoping to get pregnant. But Henry isn’t sure he’s ready for fatherhood…Both sets of couples face the challenges of marriage, fidelity, and pregnancy, against a backdrop of political disappointment and intellectual controversy. The characters and their ghosts bump into and weave around each other, unaware that they once inhabited the same space. A novel in the key of Éric Rohmer, Scaffolding is about the bonds we create with people and the difficulty of ever fully severing them; about the ways that people we’ve known live on in us; and about the way that the homes we make hold communal memories of the people who’ve lived in them and the stories that have been told there.]]> 388 Lauren Elkin 1529926459 Nate 0 to-read, up-next 3.71 2024 Scaffolding
author: Lauren Elkin
name: Nate
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/05
shelves: to-read, up-next
review:

]]> Chouette 58769648 An exhilarating, provocative novel of motherhood in extremis.

Tiny is pregnant. Her husband is delighted. “You think this baby is going to be like you, but it’s not like you at all,� she warns him. “This baby is an owl-baby.�

When Chouette is born small and broken-winged, Tiny works around the clock to meet her daughter’s needs. Left on her own to care for a child who seems more predatory bird than baby, Tiny vows to raise Chouette to be her authentic self. Even in those times when Chouette’s behaviors grow violent and strange, Tiny’s loving commitment to her daughter is unwavering. When she discovers that her husband is on an obsessive and increasingly dangerous quest to find a “cure� for their daughter, Tiny must decide whether Chouette should be raised to fit in or to be herself—and learn what it truly means to be a mother.

Arresting, darkly funny, and unsettling, Chouette is a brilliant exploration of ambition, sacrifice, perceptions of ability, and the ferocity of motherly love.]]> 251 Claire Oshetsky 0063066696 Nate 0 to-read 3.84 2021 Chouette
author: Claire Oshetsky
name: Nate
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story]]> 204316857 The Nobelist's latest masterwork, set in a sanitarium on the eve of World War I, probes the horrors that lie beneath our most hallowed ideas.

In September 1913, Mieczysław, a student suffering from tuberculosis, arrives at Wilhelm Opitz's Guesthouse for Gentlemen, a health resort in Görbersdorf, what is now western Poland. Every day, its residents gather in the dining room to imbibe the hallucinogenic local liqueur, to obsess over money and status, and to discuss the great issues of the day: Will there be war? Monarchy or democracy? Do devils exist? Are women inherently inferior?

Meanwhile, disturbing things are beginning to happen in the guesthouse and its surroundings. As stories of shocking events in the surrounding highlands reach the men, a sense of dread builds. Someone—or something—seems to be watching them and attempting to infiltrate their world. Little does Mieczysław realize, as he attempts to unravel both the truths within himself and the mystery of the sinister forces beyond, that they have already chosen their next target.

A century after the publication of The Magic Mountain, Tokarczuk revisits Thomas Mann territory and lays claim to it, blending horror story, comedy, folklore, and feminist parable with brilliant storytelling.]]> 320 Olga Tokarczuk 0593712943 Nate 0 to-read 3.66 2022 The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story
author: Olga Tokarczuk
name: Nate
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals]]> 55742688 AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

"Provocative and appealing . . . well worth your extremely limited time." —Barbara Spindel, The Wall Street Journal

The average human lifespan is absurdly, insultingly brief. Assuming you live to be eighty, you have just over four thousand weeks.

Nobody needs telling there isn’t enough time. We’re obsessed with our lengthening to-do lists, our overfilled inboxes, work-life balance, and the ceaseless battle against distraction; and we’re deluged with advice on becoming more productive and efficient, and “life hacks� to optimize our days. But such techniques often end up making things worse. The sense of anxious hurry grows more intense, and still the most meaningful parts of life seem to lie just beyond the horizon. Still, we rarely make the connection between our daily struggles with time and the ultimate time management the challenge of how best to use our four thousand weeks.

Drawing on the insights of both ancient and contemporary philosophers, psychologists, and spiritual teachers, Oliver Burkeman delivers an entertaining, humorous, practical, and ultimately profound guide to time and time management. Rejecting the futile modern fixation on “getting everything done,� Four Thousand Weeks introduces readers to tools for constructing a meaningful life by embracing finitude, showing how many of the unhelpful ways we’ve come to think about time aren’t inescapable, unchanging truths, but choices we’ve made as individuals and as a society—and that we could do things differently.]]> 290 Oliver Burkeman 0374715246 Nate 4
5 stars for the first section, which delves a bit into the history of modern time and clocks, train stations, monks � a subject I find very interesting and nearly psychedelic to think about. (And which is also explored in WG Sebald’s brilliant novel Austerlitz, one of my all time favorites).

The second section, which is more practical and less philosophical, gets a little repetitive and dull to me. In my opinion it could’ve used a better editor, but that’s just one opinion on a book that’s very well loved.

The argument Burkeman makes is provocative ; but only because we live in so called “late stage capitalism� � an era where data , distraction , and identity are all monetized and turned into factory pieces for a network that’s being trained to think and create on its own.

In less apocalyptic times, his theories would be simple common sense.

So, another 5 stars for bringing the argument that our lives are worth more than our phones, into popular consciousness. And the footnotes are filled with writers I’m eager to either explore or explore further.

Great insights, great ideas and sources, wonderful first half, but a bit dry and overlong by the end, in my opinion at least. (And could’ve used less appendixes; though I’d guess the publisher pushed that). ]]> 4.33 2021 Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
author: Oliver Burkeman
name: Nate
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/20
date added: 2024/09/21
shelves:
review:
First nonfiction book I finished this year is (embarrassingly) a self help book � ish at least.

5 stars for the first section, which delves a bit into the history of modern time and clocks, train stations, monks � a subject I find very interesting and nearly psychedelic to think about. (And which is also explored in WG Sebald’s brilliant novel Austerlitz, one of my all time favorites).

The second section, which is more practical and less philosophical, gets a little repetitive and dull to me. In my opinion it could’ve used a better editor, but that’s just one opinion on a book that’s very well loved.

The argument Burkeman makes is provocative ; but only because we live in so called “late stage capitalism� � an era where data , distraction , and identity are all monetized and turned into factory pieces for a network that’s being trained to think and create on its own.

In less apocalyptic times, his theories would be simple common sense.

So, another 5 stars for bringing the argument that our lives are worth more than our phones, into popular consciousness. And the footnotes are filled with writers I’m eager to either explore or explore further.

Great insights, great ideas and sources, wonderful first half, but a bit dry and overlong by the end, in my opinion at least. (And could’ve used less appendixes; though I’d guess the publisher pushed that).
]]> Antwerp 7093654 Antwerp can be viewed as the Big Bang of Roberto Bolaño’s fictional universe. Reading this novel, the reader is present at the birth of Bolaño’s enterprise in prose: all the elements are here, highly compressed, at the moment when his talent explodes. From this springboard—which Bolaño chose to publish in 2002, twenty years after he’d written it (“and even that I can’t be certain of�)—as if testing out a high dive, he would plunge into the unexplored depths of the modern novel.

Antwerp’s fractured narration in 54 sections—voices from a dream, from a nightmare, from passers by, from an omniscient narrator, from “Roberto Bolaño� all speak—moves in multiple directions and cuts to the bone.]]> 78 Roberto Bolaño 0811217175 Nate 4
Minor in comparison to his other works (that I’ve read at least) � but with some mesmerizing passages and atmospheres nonetheless. I know a couple people that love this novella � I wasn’t personally blown away but any Bolaño is a worthwhile read.

3 1/2 stars rounding up. ]]> 3.66 2002 Antwerp
author: Roberto Bolaño
name: Nate
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2002
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/20
date added: 2024/09/21
shelves:
review:
Reads like an extended prose poem.

Minor in comparison to his other works (that I’ve read at least) � but with some mesmerizing passages and atmospheres nonetheless. I know a couple people that love this novella � I wasn’t personally blown away but any Bolaño is a worthwhile read.

3 1/2 stars rounding up.
]]> <![CDATA[The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma]]> 18693771 A pioneering researcher transforms our understanding of trauma and offers a bold new paradigm for healing.

Trauma is a fact of life. Veterans and their families deal with the painful aftermath of combat; one in five Americans has been molested; one in four grew up with alcoholics; one in three couples have engaged in physical violence. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, one of the world's foremost experts on trauma, has spent over three decades working with survivors. In The Body Keeps the Score, he uses recent scientific advances to show how trauma literally reshapes both body and brain, compromising sufferers' capacities for pleasure, engagement, self-control, and trust. He explores innovative treatmentsâ€Äě°ů´Çłľ neurofeedback and meditation to sports, drama, and yoga—that offer new paths to recovery by activating the brain's natural neuroplasticity. Based on Dr. van der Kolk's own research and that of other leading specialists, The Body Keeps the Score exposes the tremendous power of our relationships both to hurt and to heal—and offers new hope for reclaiming lives.]]> 464 Bessel van der Kolk 0670785938 Nate 0 to-read 4.36 2014 The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
author: Bessel van der Kolk
name: Nate
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Near to the Wild Heart 19368445 This new translation of Clarice Lispector's sensational first book tells
the story of a middle class woman's life from childhood through an
unhappy marriage and its dissolution to transcendence.

Near to the Wild Heart, published in Rio de Janeiro in 1943, introduced Brazil to what one writer called “Hurricane Clarice�: a twenty-three-year-old girl who wrote her first book in a tiny rented room and then baptized it with a title taken from Joyce: “He was alone, unheeded, near to the wild heart of life.�

The book was an unprecedented sensation � the discovery of a genius. Narrative epiphanies and interior monologue frame the life of Joana, from her middle-class childhood through her unhappy marriage and its dissolution to transcendence, when she proclaims: “I shall arise as strong and comely as a young colt.�

]]> 134 Clarice Lispector 0811220710 Nate 4 3.70 1943 Near to the Wild Heart
author: Clarice Lispector
name: Nate
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1943
rating: 4
read at: 2012/12/20
date added: 2024/09/21
shelves:
review:
This is the third of the new translations of hers I've read... Didn't love it as much as the other two, but it still pretty much blew me away.
]]> <![CDATA[Letters to a Young Poet: With the Letters to Rilke from the ''Young Poet'']]> 56212438 Letters to a Young Poet, first published in 1929. Most readers and scholars have long assumed that the letters from the young poet were forever lost to posterity. Yet, shockingly, these letters were recently uncovered in Germany, and now the acclaimed translator Damion Searls has not only cast a fresh eye on Rilke’s original letters but also those of the “young poet,� Franz Xaver Kappus, an Austrian military cadet and an aspiring poet. This timeless edition, in addition to presenting their dialogue together for the first time in English, provides a new window into the workings of Rilke’s visionary poetic and philosophical mind, allowing us to reexperience the literary genius of one of the most inspiring works of twentieth-century literature.]]> 175 Rainer Maria Rilke 1631497685 Nate 0 to-read 4.29 1929 Letters to a Young Poet: With the Letters to Rilke from the ''Young Poet''
author: Rainer Maria Rilke
name: Nate
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1929
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum]]> 69880 The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum has taken on heightened relevance.

A young woman's association with a hunted man makes her the target of a journalist determined to grab the headlines by portraying her as an evil woman. As the attacks on her escalate and she becomes the victim of anonymous threats, Katharina sees only one way out of her nightmare.

Turning the mystery genre on its head, the novel begins with the confession of a crime, drawing the reader into a web of sensationalism, character assassination, and the unavoidable eruption of violence.]]> 140 Heinrich Böll 0140187286 Nate 4
As well, it also feels very cinematic and tele-visual, even though the prose style was a huge reason I kept reading. I could easily imagine this falling into the 90s American indie catalogue of Soderbergh and the like.

Very short non-committal read. Quite good. My first experience with Böll, and I could be wrong, but I think his only English translated book that is still in print ? ]]> 3.75 1974 The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum
author: Heinrich Böll
name: Nate
average rating: 3.75
book published: 1974
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/06
date added: 2024/09/11
shelves:
review:
Didn't write a review yet; but what perhaps stood out to me most in this interesting novella was how contemporary it felt, and I couldn't help from wondering if Roberto Bolaño was a fan of it? The subject matter, faux-"objective" writing style, non-linear format, and multiple sources telling a mystery inside out (the book in fact starts with the killing, so there is no mystery); all seemed incredibly Bolaño-esque.

As well, it also feels very cinematic and tele-visual, even though the prose style was a huge reason I kept reading. I could easily imagine this falling into the 90s American indie catalogue of Soderbergh and the like.

Very short non-committal read. Quite good. My first experience with Böll, and I could be wrong, but I think his only English translated book that is still in print ?
]]> <![CDATA[The Society of Reluctant Dreamers]]> 48641220
In The Society of Reluctant Dreamers, Daniel dreams of Julio Cortázar in the form of an ancient giant cedar, his friend Hossi transforming into a dark crow, and most often of the Cotton-Candy-Hair-Woman, Moira, staring right back at him. After emails back-and-forth, Moira and Daniel meet, and Daniel becomes involved in a mysterious project with a Brazilian neuroscientist, who's creating a machine to photograph people's dreams. Set against the dense web of Angola's political history, Daniel crosses the hazy border between dream and reality, sleepwalking towards a twisted and entirely strange present.]]> 264 José Eduardo Agualusa 1939810485 Nate 4
Tempted to round down ; but the book was good enough to finish and not abandon.

First, the bad: I found many of the female characters to be a bit two dimensional, same with the descriptions of sex and erotica, and the male protagonist seemed to be a bit too self-congratulatory, in a way that I couldn't help thinking the writer was identifying with. This was all off putting.

The writing style was nice, but not amazing. Might have appealed to me if I was in my early 20s. Reminds me a bit of lesser Murakami, although it does have a touch more maturity than that.

But the good: Also like Murakami, this contains many stories within stories, and as the slim novel progressed, I was captured by how the stories weaved in and out, and how disparate threads came together. In particular, I thoroughly enjoyed the character of Hossi and his story (am I remembering the name correct? I don't have the book in front of me). An ex officer who has a crises of meaning and identity, Hossi has a strange habit of appearing in other people's dreams when he sleeps, and as such, was put under watch in a sort of house arrest by the government. He is also someone who believes he died when being struck by lightning, and lost much of his memory around his violent role as an officer. When we meet him, he is very liberalized, a sympathizer to leftists.

In any case, his story might have been a huge reason I kept reading this book. Those passages were very engaging and engrossing, even if they did still suffer from a slightly weak writing style and the sometimes cheesy dialogue that happens throughout the book.

5+ stars to the design by Archipelego. All of their books are such pleasures to read, and they are not only a seal of good curation, but their design is really some of the best. The texture of the cover, the size of the pages, the spacing and size of font, the quality of the paper ... In the last year, during a slow year from my job in entertainment, I opened a very small book/record store with a friend (it does not make money) -- and I've come to appreciate good design, which I used to just think of as the cover art, but now I consider to be the entire reading experience. It can make or break a book, with this one being a good example.

Anyway, the last couple months I've been on a bit of a reading slump -- not quite loving anything I've picked up (though the year as a whole was a great reading year so far). This book, aside from its problems, serves as a great bridge in this slump I think. Good enough to keep continuing, not too long, not awful, some really cool moments, and a very good melodic tempo in the writing throughout.

So, even though my review is only so-so, you could spend time doing worse things than reading this.

(I also purposefully did not read other reviews while doing this one, as I wanted to go in totally blind. I'm looking at reviews now and many love this writer -- so perhaps I'm way off, and take what I say with a grain of salt haha).]]> 4.06 2017 The Society of Reluctant Dreamers
author: José Eduardo Agualusa
name: Nate
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/09
date added: 2024/09/11
shelves:
review:
3.5 stars , not sure whether to round up or down ?

Tempted to round down ; but the book was good enough to finish and not abandon.

First, the bad: I found many of the female characters to be a bit two dimensional, same with the descriptions of sex and erotica, and the male protagonist seemed to be a bit too self-congratulatory, in a way that I couldn't help thinking the writer was identifying with. This was all off putting.

The writing style was nice, but not amazing. Might have appealed to me if I was in my early 20s. Reminds me a bit of lesser Murakami, although it does have a touch more maturity than that.

But the good: Also like Murakami, this contains many stories within stories, and as the slim novel progressed, I was captured by how the stories weaved in and out, and how disparate threads came together. In particular, I thoroughly enjoyed the character of Hossi and his story (am I remembering the name correct? I don't have the book in front of me). An ex officer who has a crises of meaning and identity, Hossi has a strange habit of appearing in other people's dreams when he sleeps, and as such, was put under watch in a sort of house arrest by the government. He is also someone who believes he died when being struck by lightning, and lost much of his memory around his violent role as an officer. When we meet him, he is very liberalized, a sympathizer to leftists.

In any case, his story might have been a huge reason I kept reading this book. Those passages were very engaging and engrossing, even if they did still suffer from a slightly weak writing style and the sometimes cheesy dialogue that happens throughout the book.

5+ stars to the design by Archipelego. All of their books are such pleasures to read, and they are not only a seal of good curation, but their design is really some of the best. The texture of the cover, the size of the pages, the spacing and size of font, the quality of the paper ... In the last year, during a slow year from my job in entertainment, I opened a very small book/record store with a friend (it does not make money) -- and I've come to appreciate good design, which I used to just think of as the cover art, but now I consider to be the entire reading experience. It can make or break a book, with this one being a good example.

Anyway, the last couple months I've been on a bit of a reading slump -- not quite loving anything I've picked up (though the year as a whole was a great reading year so far). This book, aside from its problems, serves as a great bridge in this slump I think. Good enough to keep continuing, not too long, not awful, some really cool moments, and a very good melodic tempo in the writing throughout.

So, even though my review is only so-so, you could spend time doing worse things than reading this.

(I also purposefully did not read other reviews while doing this one, as I wanted to go in totally blind. I'm looking at reviews now and many love this writer -- so perhaps I'm way off, and take what I say with a grain of salt haha).
]]> Intermezzo 208931300 An exquisitely moving story about grief, love, and family—but especially loveâ€Äě°ů´Çłľ the global phenomenon Sally Rooney.

Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common.

Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties—successful, competent, and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women—his enduring first love, Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke.

Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined.

For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude—a period of desire, despair, and possibility; a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.]]> 454 Sally Rooney 0374602638 Nate 0 to-read 3.88 2024 Intermezzo
author: Sally Rooney
name: Nate
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Gilead (Gilead, #1) 68210 Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson returns with an intimate tale of three generations, from the Civil War to the 20th century: a story about fathers and sons and the spiritual battles that still rage at America's heart. In the words of Kirkus, it is a novel "as big as a nation, as quiet as thought, and moving as prayer. Matchless and towering." GILEAD tells the story of America and will break your heart.]]> 247 Marilynne Robinson 031242440X Nate 0 to-read 3.84 2004 Gilead (Gilead, #1)
author: Marilynne Robinson
name: Nate
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought]]> 114809 Gilead offers us other ways of thinking about history, religion, and society. Whether rescuing "Calvinism" and its creator Jean Cauvin from the repressive "puritan" stereotype, or considering how the McGuffey readers were inspired by Midwestern abolitionists, or the divide between the Bible and Darwinism, Marilynne Robinson repeatedly sends her reader back to the primary texts that are central to the development of American culture but little read or acknowledged today.

A passionate and provocative celebration of ideas, the old arts of civilization, and life's mystery, The Death of Adam is, in the words of Robert D. Richardson, Jr., "a grand, sweeping, blazing, brilliant, life-changing book."]]> 263 Marilynne Robinson 0312425325 Nate 0 to-read 4.10 1998 The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought
author: Marilynne Robinson
name: Nate
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1998
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Plague 61966688 The Plague is a collection of essays guiding us from the Covid-19 pandemic through to the war in Ukraine in order to imagine a world in which a radical respect for death might exist alongside a fairer distribution of the earth's wealth. 'Living death' will appear as something of a refrain, a reminder that to think of death as random, or as an avoidable intruder into how we order our lives, especially in the West, is an act of defiance that is doomed to fail. In the thought of the philosopher Simone Weil, who plays a key role in the book, only if we admit the limits of the human, will we stop vaunting the brute illusion of earthly power.]]> 160 Jacqueline Rose 1804270482 Nate 0 to-read 3.57 2023 The Plague
author: Jacqueline Rose
name: Nate
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Morning Star (Morgenstjernen, #1)]]> 57799745
Above them all, a huge star suddenly appears in the sky. No one, not even the astronomers, knows for sure what kind of phenomenon it is. Is there a star burning itself out? Why then has no one seen it before? Or is it a brand new star? Slowly the interest in the news subsides, and life goes on, but not quite as before, for unusual phenomena begin to occur on the fringes of human existence.

Over these days in August, the characters the novel follows will each understand what is happening differently, and all face new struggles in their own lives.]]> 666 Karl Ove KnausgĂĄrd 0399563423 Nate 0 to-read, up-next 3.89 2020 The Morning Star (Morgenstjernen, #1)
author: Karl Ove KnausgĂĄrd
name: Nate
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/17
shelves: to-read, up-next
review:

]]> Ovid's Metamorphosis. 14230947
Ovid

Gale, Sabin Americana



Based on Joseph Sabin's famed bibliography, Bibliotheca Americana, Sabin Americana, 1500--1926 contains a collection of books, pamphlets, serials and other works about the Americas, from the time of their discovery to the early 1900s. Sabin Americana is rich in original accounts of discovery and exploration, pioneering and westward expansion, the U.S. Civil War and other military actions, Native Americans, slavery and abolition, religious history and more.

Sabin Americana offers an up-close perspective on life in the western hemisphere, encompassing the arrival of the Europeans on the shores of North America in the late 15th century to the first decades of the 20th century. Covering a span of over 400 years in North, Central and South America as well as the Caribbean, this collection highlights the society, politics, religious beliefs, culture, contemporary opinions and momentous events of the time. It provides access to documents from an assortment of genres, sermons, political tracts, newspapers, books, pamphlets, maps, legislation, literature and more.

Now for the first time, these high-quality digital scans of original works are available via print-on-demand, making them readily accessible to libraries, students, independent scholars, and readers of all ages.

++++
The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition
++++

Huntington Library

SABCP02952700

CTRG99-B947

16260101

Selected Americana from Sabin's Dictionary of books relating to America

Engraved t.p.

326 p., [2] leaves of ill.; 27 cm]]> 352 Ovid 1275757081 Nate 0 to-read, up-next 4.07 8 Ovid's Metamorphosis.
author: Ovid
name: Nate
average rating: 4.07
book published: 8
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/17
shelves: to-read, up-next
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World]]> 48582 Winner of the International Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction

Animal tracks, word magic, the speech of stones, the power of letters, and the taste of the wind all figure prominently in this intellectual tour de force that returns us to our senses and to the sensuous terrain that sustains us. This major work of ecological philosophy startles the senses out of habitual ways of perception.

For a thousand generations, human beings viewed themselves as part of the wider community of nature, and they carried on active relationships not only with other people with other animals, plants, and natural objects (including mountains, rivers, winds, and weather patters) that we have only lately come to think of as inanimate. How, then, did humans come to sever their ancient reciprocity with the natural world? What will it take for us to recover a sustaining relation with the breathing earth?

In The Spell of the Sensuous David Abram draws on sources as diverse as the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty, Balinese shamanism, Apache storytelling, and his own experience as an accomplished sleight-of-hand of magician to reveal the subtle dependence of human cognition on the natural environment. He explores the character of perception and excavates the sensual foundations of language, which--even at its most abstract--echoes the calls and cries of the earth. On every page of this lyrical work, Abram weaves his arguments with a passion, a precision, and an intellectual daring that recall such writers as Loren Eisleley, Annie Dillard, and Barry Lopez.]]> 368 David Abram 0679776397 Nate 0 to-read, up-next 4.16 1996 The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World
author: David Abram
name: Nate
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1996
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/17
shelves: to-read, up-next
review:

]]> Fracture 51542626 368 Andrés Neuman 0374158231 Nate 0 to-read 3.76 2018 Fracture
author: Andrés Neuman
name: Nate
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Malina 265987 Malina brutally lays bare the struggle for love and the limits of discourse between women and men.]]> 244 Ingeborg Bachmann 0841911894 Nate 0 to-read, up-next 4.06 1971 Malina
author: Ingeborg Bachmann
name: Nate
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1971
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/17
shelves: to-read, up-next
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Gospel According to Jesus Christ]]> 28859 ]]> 341 José Saramago 186046095X Nate 0 to-read 4.31 1991 The Gospel According to Jesus Christ
author: José Saramago
name: Nate
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1991
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas]]> 87264 176 Machado de Assis 0850515025 Nate 0 4.34 1881 Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas
author: Machado de Assis
name: Nate
average rating: 4.34
book published: 1881
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/17
shelves:
review:

]]> The Maniac 75665931 From one of contemporary literature’s most exciting new voices, a haunting story centered on the Hungarian polymath John von Neumann, tracing the impact of his singular legacy on the dreams and nightmares of the twentieth century and the nascent age of AI

Benjamín Labatut’s When We Cease to Understand the World electrified a global readership. A Booker Prize and National Book Award finalist, and one of the New York Times� Ten Best Books of the Year, it explored the life and thought of a clutch of mathematicians and physicists who took science to strange and sometimes dangerous new realms. In The MANIAC, Labatut has created a tour de force on an even grander scale.

A prodigy whose gifts terrified the people around him, John von Neumann transformed every field he touched, inventing game theory and the first programable computer, and pioneering AI, digital life, and cellular automata. Through a chorus of family members, friends, colleagues, and rivals, Labatut shows us the evolution of a mind unmatched and of a body of work that has unmoored the world in its wake.

The MANIAC places von Neumann at the center of a literary triptych that begins with Paul Ehrenfest, an Austrian physicist and friend of Einstein, who fell into despair when he saw science and technology become tyrannical forces; it ends a hundred years later, in the showdown between the South Korean Go Master Lee Sedol and the AI program AlphaGo, an encounter embodying the central question of von Neumann's most ambitious unfinished project: the creation of a self-reproducing machine, an intelligence able to evolve beyond human understanding or control.

A work of beauty and fabulous momentum, The MANIAC confronts us with the deepest questions we face as a species.]]> 368 BenjamĂ­n Labatut 0593654471 Nate 5
There’s a chance I liked this even more than his other translated “novel� When We Cease to Understand the World. Although I do have to say the Maniac would’ve benefited from being a touch shorter. The prose style and themes got a bit repetitive toward the end, like a Werner Herzog doc that you fall in love with for the first hour, but then almost becomes predictable in its intensity.

(But just like the doc, I will likely think about this a long time).

My favorite of the three sections, each which would work as a standalone novella, was the final one about an AI machine playing the game Go against the world champion.

The prologue to that section reminded me of the best Eliot Weinberger essays (a writer who’s quoted in The Maniac) � and the story itself was suspenseful and riveting, while still retaining the philosophical weight of the other two. I liked how zoomed in it was; less biographical as the others; more focused; just a joy to read. In other words, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, I liked how the last section was more “plot� and “story� driven. (I tend to read for story second). The Go game felt cinematic.

The middle section on Von Neuman, which is the weightiest and the longest part of the book, read like Bolaño � and to me, it’s exciting to have read two contemporary books this year that share that influence (the other book being Teju Coles stunning novel Tremors).

Labatut does wear his influences on his sleeve ; but he does so with taste and precision , and his influences happen to be writers I love. (See also: Sebald).

An engaging, pleasurable, and cerebral novel with excellent style. A dystopic sci fi novel spun on its head � everything is based on facts, but it is written as fiction � so it’s literal science fiction about today, yesterday, and our immediate future.

(PS And the cover art, while great, becomes even more fascinating when one reads the description of how it was created � I won’t spoil the process behind it � you can read it in the jacket flap).]]> 4.33 2023 The Maniac
author: BenjamĂ­n Labatut
name: Nate
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/05/04
date added: 2024/08/17
shelves:
review:
(Definitely above four stars, but not enough to round up to 5.)

There’s a chance I liked this even more than his other translated “novel� When We Cease to Understand the World. Although I do have to say the Maniac would’ve benefited from being a touch shorter. The prose style and themes got a bit repetitive toward the end, like a Werner Herzog doc that you fall in love with for the first hour, but then almost becomes predictable in its intensity.

(But just like the doc, I will likely think about this a long time).

My favorite of the three sections, each which would work as a standalone novella, was the final one about an AI machine playing the game Go against the world champion.

The prologue to that section reminded me of the best Eliot Weinberger essays (a writer who’s quoted in The Maniac) � and the story itself was suspenseful and riveting, while still retaining the philosophical weight of the other two. I liked how zoomed in it was; less biographical as the others; more focused; just a joy to read. In other words, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, I liked how the last section was more “plot� and “story� driven. (I tend to read for story second). The Go game felt cinematic.

The middle section on Von Neuman, which is the weightiest and the longest part of the book, read like Bolaño � and to me, it’s exciting to have read two contemporary books this year that share that influence (the other book being Teju Coles stunning novel Tremors).

Labatut does wear his influences on his sleeve ; but he does so with taste and precision , and his influences happen to be writers I love. (See also: Sebald).

An engaging, pleasurable, and cerebral novel with excellent style. A dystopic sci fi novel spun on its head � everything is based on facts, but it is written as fiction � so it’s literal science fiction about today, yesterday, and our immediate future.

(PS And the cover art, while great, becomes even more fascinating when one reads the description of how it was created � I won’t spoil the process behind it � you can read it in the jacket flap).
]]> Austral 62039278 From Carlos Fonseca comes a dazzling novel about legacy, memory, and the desire to know and be known.

The English writer Aliza Abravanel races to finish her final novel before her mind deteriorates. The last living speaker of a language is confronted with the disappearance of his culture. Through the construction of an esoteric theater of memory, a survivor of the Guatemalan genocide seeks to recover the memories buried in the trauma of war. Seeking the connecting thread between these three stories of loss is Julio, a disillusioned professor of literature who receives a posthumous summons from his old friend Aliza that will send him hurtling into a painful episode from his past.

A novel of compassion and of return--to one's native country, to one's darkest memories, to oneself--Austral maps a journey from war-ravaged Guatemala to the high Peruvian Amazon, passing through Nueva Germania, the antisemitic commune founded in Paraguay by Elisabeth F�rster-Nietzsche. A treasure box of intertwined stories, it is a fascinating investigation into the pain of loss, the disappearance of language and memory, and the dangers of globalization. With this dazzling exploration of the traces we leave behind, those we erase, and those we seek to rebuild, Carlos Fonseca confirms his status as one of the most powerful voices in contemporary Latin American literature.

Includes black-and-white illustrations]]> 224 Carlos Fonseca 037460665X Nate 4 to-read
I also read it while craving literature both serious and *warm* -- something that seems a bit elusive to find, so I was juggling with Saramago, which felt like a good bet alongside this. But I'm beginning to feel and understand that certain novels, this one likely included, should have a singular attention while reading them.

I'm curious to read more Fonseca. As always, Megan McDowell does an excellent translation. Her name on a book is a seal of approval for me.

Ironically, despite my search for warmth in literature, Fonseca has inspired me to pick up a novel by Bernhard, probably one of the least warm writers I can think of lol.]]> 3.73 2022 Austral
author: Carlos Fonseca
name: Nate
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/17
date added: 2024/08/17
shelves: to-read
review:
I read this during a very busy time in my life, and don't think I gave it the focus it warranted. As such, it never quite sank in for me, though I did find it fascinating. (In a way, it reminded me of Catherine Lacey's Autobiography of X; although I do think I slightly prefer Austral to that one).

I also read it while craving literature both serious and *warm* -- something that seems a bit elusive to find, so I was juggling with Saramago, which felt like a good bet alongside this. But I'm beginning to feel and understand that certain novels, this one likely included, should have a singular attention while reading them.

I'm curious to read more Fonseca. As always, Megan McDowell does an excellent translation. Her name on a book is a seal of approval for me.

Ironically, despite my search for warmth in literature, Fonseca has inspired me to pick up a novel by Bernhard, probably one of the least warm writers I can think of lol.
]]> Extinction 162612 Extinction, his last novel, takes the form of the autobiographical testimony of Franz-Josef Murau. The intellectual black sheep of a powerful Austrian land-owning family, Murau lives in self-exile in Rome. Obsessed and angry with his identity as an Austrian, he resolves never to return to the family estate of Wolfsegg. But when news comes of his parents' deaths, he finds himself master of Wolfsegg and must decide its fate.

Written in Bernhard's seamless style, Extinction is the ultimate proof of his extraordinary literary genius.]]> 335 Thomas Bernhard 0704370859 Nate 0 to-read 4.32 1986 Extinction
author: Thomas Bernhard
name: Nate
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1986
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> FEM 22709918 204 Magda Cârneci 9734643568 Nate 0 to-read 3.35 2011 FEM
author: Magda Cârneci
name: Nate
average rating: 3.35
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[An Earthquake Is a Shaking of the Surface of the Earth]]> 208896788 A formidable, uncanny, and utterly unique new work from accomplished novelist and poet, Anna Moschovakis, whose translation of David Diop’s Frêre d’âme (At Night All Blood Is Black, Pushkin and FSG) won the 2021 International Booker Prize

In An Earthquake Is a Shaking of the Surface of the Earth, an unnamed narrator struggles to regain the ability to walk after a sudden seismic event has rendered unpredictable shifts and undulations in the ground. Convinced of a need to find and kill her younger housemate, Tala, who has disappeared, the narrator struggles physically and psychically to contend with her homicidal task in the wake of failure as a Method actor. The narrator travels back in time and out into a dust-covered, shadowy city, where she is targeted by charismatic “healing� ideologues with uncertain motives. Torn between a paranoid suspicion of internalized, toxic language, and a desperate attempt to find stability and feel something like whole, she is forced to question familiar figurations of light, shadow, authenticity, and voice, taking tentative steps toward a new understanding of self and world.]]> 208 Anna Moschovakis 1593767838 Nate 0 to-read 3.09 2024 An Earthquake Is a Shaking of the Surface of the Earth
author: Anna Moschovakis
name: Nate
average rating: 3.09
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Anthropologists 195391751
As the young couple dreams about the possibilities of each new listing, Asya, a documentarian, spends her days gathering footage from the neighborhood park like an anthropologist observing local customs. “Forget about daily life,� chides her grandmother on the phone. “We named you for a whole continent and you're filming a park.� Life back in Asya and Manu's respective home countries continues-parents age, grandparents get sick, nieces and nephews grow up-all just slightly beyond their reach. But the world they're making in their new city is growing, too, they hope, into something that will be distinctly theirs. As they open up the horizons of their lives, what and whom will they hold onto, and what will they need to release?

Hailed by Lauren Groff and Marina Abramovic, Savas's fine, precise craft turns The Anthropologist's simple apartment search into a soulful, often funny, examination of modern coupledom, home-building, and expat life in the universal modern city.]]> 192 AysegĂĽl Savas 163973306X Nate 0 to-read 3.88 2024 The Anthropologists
author: AysegĂĽl Savas
name: Nate
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Gretel and the Great War 195791398 A lean, seductive, and dazzlingly inventive novel that shows us the dark side of early twentieth-century Vienna.

Vienna, 1919. A once-mighty empire has finally come crashing down—and a mysterious young woman, unable to speak, has turned up on the streets. A doctor appeals to the public for information about her past and receives a single response, from a sanatorium patient who claims to be her father.

The man reveals only her name is Gretel. But he encloses a bedtime story he asks the doctor to read aloud to her, about an Architect whose radically modern creation has caused a great scandal. The next day a second story arrives, about a Ballet Master who develops a new position of the feet. Twenty-four more stories follow in alphabetical order, about an Immunologist and a Jeweler, a Revolutionary and a Satirist, a Waif and an X-ray Technician and a Zionist.

Crossing paths and purposes, their stories interweave until a single picture emerges, that of a decadent, death-obsessed, oversexed empire buzzing with the ideas of Freud and Karl Kraus. There are artists who ape the innocence of children, and scientists who insist that children are anything but innocent . . . And then there’s Gretel’s own mother, who will do whatever it takes to sing onstage at the City Theater. Is it any wonder that this world—soon to vanish anyway in a war to end all wars—was one from which Gretel’s father wished to shelter her?]]> 224 Adam Ehrlich Sachs 0374614245 Nate 0 to-read 3.64 2024 Gretel and the Great War
author: Adam Ehrlich Sachs
name: Nate
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Famished Road 101094
In the decade since it won the Booker Prize, Ben Okri's Famished Road has become a classic. Like Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children or Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, it combines brilliant narrative technique with a fresh vision to create an essential work of world literature.

The narrator, Azaro, is an abiku, a spirit child, who in the Yoruba tradition of Nigeria exists between life and death. The life he foresees for himself and the tale he tells is full of sadness and tragedy, but inexplicably he is born with a smile on his face. Nearly called back to the land of the dead, he is resurrected. But in their efforts to save their child, Azaro's loving parents are made destitute.]]> 512 Ben Okri 0385425139 Nate 0 to-read 3.76 1991 The Famished Road
author: Ben Okri
name: Nate
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1991
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower]]> 28385 In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower is Proust’s spectacular dissection of male and female adolescence, charged with the narrator’s memories of Paris and the Normandy seaside. At the heart of the story lies his relationships with his grandmother and with the Swann family. As a meditation on different forms of love, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower has no equal. Here, Proust introduces some of his greatest comic inventions, from the magnificently dull M. de Norpois to the enchanting Robert de Saint-Loup. It is memorable as well for the first appearance of the two figures who for better or worse are to dominate the narrator’s life—the Baron de Charlus and the mysterious Albertine.
First time in Penguin Classics


A Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition


The first completely new translation of Proust's novel since the 1920s, following Lydia Davis's brilliant translation of Swann's Way


Ěý±Ő±Ő> 533 Marcel Proust 0143039075 Nate 5
Prose that fires up the senses. (And which makes me wish I could read in French).

I can't compare this to the other English translation, but this was wonderful.

At times it was a slog, a bit boring even, but the moments that shined were just jaw dropping in their mood. Ecstatic is perhaps the right word for it.

I'll maybe never forget when he compares his window view to looking at art.

Personally, I might have enjoyed this even more than book one, though that volume has my favorite description of music I've ever read. ]]> 4.42 1919 In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower
author: Marcel Proust
name: Nate
average rating: 4.42
book published: 1919
rating: 5
read at: 2024/07/23
date added: 2024/07/29
shelves:
review:
Incredibly rich prose, like eating an intense and satisfying desert.

Prose that fires up the senses. (And which makes me wish I could read in French).

I can't compare this to the other English translation, but this was wonderful.

At times it was a slog, a bit boring even, but the moments that shined were just jaw dropping in their mood. Ecstatic is perhaps the right word for it.

I'll maybe never forget when he compares his window view to looking at art.

Personally, I might have enjoyed this even more than book one, though that volume has my favorite description of music I've ever read.
]]> Pale Fire 7805
Nabokov's darkly witty, richly inventive masterpiece is a suspenseful whodunit, a story of one-upmanship and dubious penmanship, and a glorious literary conundrum.

Part of a major new series of the works of Vladimir Nabokov, author of Lolita and Pale Fire, in Penguin Classics.]]> 246 Vladimir Nabokov Nate 0 to-read 4.17 1962 Pale Fire
author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: Nate
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1962
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Daughter 124029281 In Claudia Dey’s Daughter, a woman long caught in her father's web strives to make a life—and art—of her own.

To be loved by your father is to be loved by God.

So says Mona Dean—playwright, actress, and daughter to a man famous for one great novel, whose needs and insecurities exert an inescapable pull and exact an immeasurable toll on the women of his family: Mona, her sister, her half-sister, their mothers. His infidelity destroyed Mona’s childhood, setting her in opposition to a stepmother who, though equally damaged, disdains her for being broken. Then, just as Mona is settling into her life as an adult and a fledgling artist, he begins a new affair and takes her into his confidence. Mona delights—painfully, parasitically—in this attention. When he inevitably confesses to his wife, Mona is cast as the agent of disruption, punished for her father’s crimes and ejected from the family.

Mona’s tenuous stability is thrown into chaos. Only when she suffers an incalculable loss—one far deeper and more defining than family entanglements—can she begin supplanting absent love with real love. Pushed to the precipice, she must decide how she wants to live, what she most needs to say, and the risks she will take to say it.

Claudia Dey chronicles our most intimate lives with penetrating insight and devilish humor. Daughter is an obsessive, blazing examination of the forces that drive us to become, to create, and to break free.]]> 272 Claudia Dey 0374609705 Nate 0 to-read 3.93 2023 Daughter
author: Claudia Dey
name: Nate
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Baltasar and Blimunda 2530
When King and Church exercise absolute power what happens to the dreams of ordinary people? In early eighteenth century Lisbon, Baltasar, a soldier who has lost a hand in battle, falls in love with Blimunda, a young girl with strange visionary powers. From the day that he follows her home from the auto-da-fé where her mother is condemned and sent into exile, the two are bound body and soul by a love of unassailable strength. A third party shares their supper that evening: Padre Bartolemeu Lourenço, whose fantasy is to invent a flying machine. As the inquisition rages and royalty and religion clash, they pursue his impossible, not to mention heretical, dream of flight.]]> 346 José Saramago 0156005204 Nate 0 to-read 3.99 1982 Baltasar and Blimunda
author: José Saramago
name: Nate
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1982
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Third Reich 10792024

On vacation with his girlfriend, Ingeborg, the German war games champion Udo Berger returns to a small town on the Costa Brava where he spent the summers of his childhood. Soon they meet another vacationing German couple, Charly and Hanna, who introduce them to a band of locals—the Wolf, the Lamb, and El Quemado—and to the darker side of life in a resort town.

Late one night, Charly disappears without a trace, and Udo’s well-ordered life is thrown into upheaval; while Ingeborg and Hanna return to their lives in Germany, he refuses to leave the hotel. Soon he and El Quemado are enmeshed in a round of Third Reich, Udo’s favorite World War II strategy game, and Udo discovers that the game’s consequences may be all too real.

Written in 1989 and found among Roberto Bolaño’s papers after his death, The Third Reich is a stunning exploration of memory and violence. Reading this quick, visceral novel, we see a world-class writer coming into his own—and exploring for the first time the themes that would define his masterpieces The Savage Detectives and 2666.

]]> 277 Roberto Bolaño 0374275629 Nate 0 to-read 3.56 1989 The Third Reich
author: Roberto Bolaño
name: Nate
average rating: 3.56
book published: 1989
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Pink Slime 199797823
In a city ravaged by a mysterious plague, a woman tries to understand why her world is falling apart. An algae bloom has poisoned the previously pristine air that blows in from the sea. Inland, a secretive corporation churns out the only food anyone can afford—a revolting pink paste, made of an unknown substance. In the short, desperate breaks between deadly windstorms, our narrator stubbornly tends to her few remaining with her difficult but vulnerable mother; with the ex-husband for whom she still harbors feelings; with the boy she nannies, whose parents sent him away even as terrible threats loomed. Yet as conditions outside deteriorate further, her commitment to remaining in place only grows—even if staying means being left behind.

An evocative elegy for a safe, clean world, Pink Slime is buoyed by humor and its narrator’s resiliency. This unforgettable novel explores the place where love, responsibility, and self-preservation converge, and the beauty and fragility of our most intimate relationships.]]> 240 Fernanda Trías 1668049775 Nate 0 to-read 3.37 2020 Pink Slime
author: Fernanda TrĂ­as
name: Nate
average rating: 3.37
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Baudelaire Fractal 45010931
Part memoir, part magical realism, part hilarious trash-talking take on contemporary art and the poet's life, The Baudelaire Fractal is the long-awaited debut novel by the incomparable Lisa Robertson.]]> 208 Lisa Robertson 1552453901 Nate 0 to-read 3.95 2020 The Baudelaire Fractal
author: Lisa Robertson
name: Nate
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>