Martine's bookshelf: all en-US Wed, 07 Aug 2024 10:20:42 -0700 60 Martine's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg The Complete Fairy Tales 163716
A true classic of wonder for all ages.]]> 144 Oscar Wilde 1934169579 Martine 0 to-read 4.35 1888 The Complete Fairy Tales
author: Oscar Wilde
name: Martine
average rating: 4.35
book published: 1888
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction]]> 429983 250 Ursula K. Le Guin 0060168358 Martine 0 to-read 4.25 1979 The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction
author: Ursula K. Le Guin
name: Martine
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1979
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich]]> 3314635 151 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 0451531043 Martine 4 laogai for my own good. Whatever the reason, I have to admit that One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Alexander Solzhenitsyn's largely autobiographical account of life in the Soviet gulag, didn't impress me much initially. About a quarter into the book, I was experiencing a powerful sense of, 'Is that all? Is this the worst thing that ever happened in the gulag?' You see, the classic status of the book (the fact that it is considered the must-read account of life in the gulag) had led me to believe that One Day in the Life would be a hair-raising story of terror and cruelty, an indictment of human brutality and dehumanisation if ever there was one. Instead, it turned out to be a fairly cheerful and occasionally dull story about a man who optimistically works his way through what turns out be, on the whole, a pretty good day by labour camp standards -- a day on which the guards treat him relatively well, he gets a little more soup than usual, and so on. So I was a little underwhelmed. I'm not proud to admit it, because I know it sounds callous, but there it is.

And then a strange thing happened. I started thinking about the book, wondering why Solzhenitsyn had chosen this particular format -- why he had chosen to focus on a good day in the life of Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, rather than a more dramatic bad one. And I came to the conclusion that he had done so precisely to make his readers ask that question, to make them think of what a bad day in a Soviet labour camp would have been like, and then to turn that image over in their minds, realising that that really would have been horrible. Because that kind of involved thought -- the kind where you use your imagination and write a scenario of your own -- is bound to stay with you longer than a catalogue of horrors all spelled out for you. At least, that's how it works for me. By turning the possibility of a worse day than the one described in the book over in my mind, filling in all the gaps and supplying all the details myself (Solzhenitsyn helpfully provided some clues to send my mind in the right direction), I created a more indelible picture of life in the gulag than any gore-riddled account of Solzhenitsyn's could have provided me with, a picture that has stayed with me ever since. I suspect that was Solzhenitsyn's intention, but perhaps he was just being honest and describing things how they really were, because exaggerating them would only have resulted in claims of 'it wasn't really like that', thus invalidating the effect of his story.

Anyhow, whatever Solzhenitsyn's motives, I ended up admiring his restraint. I liked that he resisted the urge to write a spectacular and sensationalised account of life in the gulag, cramming ten years' worth of misery into one day in an inmate's life for greater dramatic effect. I also ended up appreciating his hero, Shukhov, who refuses to give in to despair and plods along in the knowledge that his only chance of survival lies in adapting to his circumstances. Shukhov works hard at his survival, scheming and planning and providing for himself in all the right ways. Such is his will to survive that I came away from the book with a powerful sense of admiration for this hardy character, who may or may not be Solzhenitsyn himself. I also found myself wondering on several occasions what I would do in Shukhov's position -- whether I would succumb to the harshness of my situation, like certain fellow prisoners of Shukhov's, whether I'd fight those in power at the risk of being broken by them, or whether I'd 'growl and submit', like Shukhov, licking arse and abandoning some of my principles while hanging on to others, purely with an eye to survival. As far as I'm concerned, any book which makes me assess my own values, principles and attitude towards life is a good one, so yes, from that point of view (as well as a few others) I would consider One Day in the Life a success.

That is not to say, however, that I think it's a brilliant book. I don't. While I admire Solzhenitsyn's ability to share a situation with his readers and convey willpower and resourcefulness in the person of his eminently practical protagonist, I'm not overly fond of his writing style, mostly because he has an annoying trick of inserting his protagonist's thoughts -- unidentified as such -- into an otherwise impersonal and objective third-person narrative. Take this paragraph, for instance:

In a corner near the door an orderly sat lazing on a stool. Beyond him, like a bent pole, stooped Shkuropatenko -- B219. That fathead -- staring out of the window, trying to see, even now, whether anyone was pinching some of his precious prefabs! You didn't spot us that time, you snoop!

Clearly, the 'You didn't spot us that time, you snoop!' is a Shukhov thought, as is the preceding sentence. I have no trouble recognising them as such, but I do find the way they are inserted into the mostly third-person narrative jarring. Solzhenitsyn does this a lot. He constantly switches from the first person to the third person, occasionally going from 'he' to 'we' to 'they' to 'I' in the space of mere paragraphs. Towards the end of the book, his use of alternating points of view became so muddled that it actually made me groan. So you can imagine I was a little surprised when I read in the introduction to the book that Solzhenitsyn was regarded a great stylist by his Russian peers. Personally, I beg to differ on that score, but not without admitting that, yes, One Day in the Life is an impressive book, as well as an important one. It may not be as spectacular as I expected it to be, but its remarkable optimism and life-affirming quality make it worthy of its reputation.]]> 3.88 1962 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
author: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
name: Martine
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1962
rating: 4
read at: 2009/07/01
date added: 2023/10/12
shelves: historical-fiction, modern-fiction, russian, continental-european
review:
Perhaps I've been desensitised to horror and suffering because there is so much of each on TV. Perhaps I've simply read a few too many accounts of life in concentration camps, early Australian penal colonies and Chinese laogai for my own good. Whatever the reason, I have to admit that One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Alexander Solzhenitsyn's largely autobiographical account of life in the Soviet gulag, didn't impress me much initially. About a quarter into the book, I was experiencing a powerful sense of, 'Is that all? Is this the worst thing that ever happened in the gulag?' You see, the classic status of the book (the fact that it is considered the must-read account of life in the gulag) had led me to believe that One Day in the Life would be a hair-raising story of terror and cruelty, an indictment of human brutality and dehumanisation if ever there was one. Instead, it turned out to be a fairly cheerful and occasionally dull story about a man who optimistically works his way through what turns out be, on the whole, a pretty good day by labour camp standards -- a day on which the guards treat him relatively well, he gets a little more soup than usual, and so on. So I was a little underwhelmed. I'm not proud to admit it, because I know it sounds callous, but there it is.

And then a strange thing happened. I started thinking about the book, wondering why Solzhenitsyn had chosen this particular format -- why he had chosen to focus on a good day in the life of Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, rather than a more dramatic bad one. And I came to the conclusion that he had done so precisely to make his readers ask that question, to make them think of what a bad day in a Soviet labour camp would have been like, and then to turn that image over in their minds, realising that that really would have been horrible. Because that kind of involved thought -- the kind where you use your imagination and write a scenario of your own -- is bound to stay with you longer than a catalogue of horrors all spelled out for you. At least, that's how it works for me. By turning the possibility of a worse day than the one described in the book over in my mind, filling in all the gaps and supplying all the details myself (Solzhenitsyn helpfully provided some clues to send my mind in the right direction), I created a more indelible picture of life in the gulag than any gore-riddled account of Solzhenitsyn's could have provided me with, a picture that has stayed with me ever since. I suspect that was Solzhenitsyn's intention, but perhaps he was just being honest and describing things how they really were, because exaggerating them would only have resulted in claims of 'it wasn't really like that', thus invalidating the effect of his story.

Anyhow, whatever Solzhenitsyn's motives, I ended up admiring his restraint. I liked that he resisted the urge to write a spectacular and sensationalised account of life in the gulag, cramming ten years' worth of misery into one day in an inmate's life for greater dramatic effect. I also ended up appreciating his hero, Shukhov, who refuses to give in to despair and plods along in the knowledge that his only chance of survival lies in adapting to his circumstances. Shukhov works hard at his survival, scheming and planning and providing for himself in all the right ways. Such is his will to survive that I came away from the book with a powerful sense of admiration for this hardy character, who may or may not be Solzhenitsyn himself. I also found myself wondering on several occasions what I would do in Shukhov's position -- whether I would succumb to the harshness of my situation, like certain fellow prisoners of Shukhov's, whether I'd fight those in power at the risk of being broken by them, or whether I'd 'growl and submit', like Shukhov, licking arse and abandoning some of my principles while hanging on to others, purely with an eye to survival. As far as I'm concerned, any book which makes me assess my own values, principles and attitude towards life is a good one, so yes, from that point of view (as well as a few others) I would consider One Day in the Life a success.

That is not to say, however, that I think it's a brilliant book. I don't. While I admire Solzhenitsyn's ability to share a situation with his readers and convey willpower and resourcefulness in the person of his eminently practical protagonist, I'm not overly fond of his writing style, mostly because he has an annoying trick of inserting his protagonist's thoughts -- unidentified as such -- into an otherwise impersonal and objective third-person narrative. Take this paragraph, for instance:

In a corner near the door an orderly sat lazing on a stool. Beyond him, like a bent pole, stooped Shkuropatenko -- B219. That fathead -- staring out of the window, trying to see, even now, whether anyone was pinching some of his precious prefabs! You didn't spot us that time, you snoop!

Clearly, the 'You didn't spot us that time, you snoop!' is a Shukhov thought, as is the preceding sentence. I have no trouble recognising them as such, but I do find the way they are inserted into the mostly third-person narrative jarring. Solzhenitsyn does this a lot. He constantly switches from the first person to the third person, occasionally going from 'he' to 'we' to 'they' to 'I' in the space of mere paragraphs. Towards the end of the book, his use of alternating points of view became so muddled that it actually made me groan. So you can imagine I was a little surprised when I read in the introduction to the book that Solzhenitsyn was regarded a great stylist by his Russian peers. Personally, I beg to differ on that score, but not without admitting that, yes, One Day in the Life is an impressive book, as well as an important one. It may not be as spectacular as I expected it to be, but its remarkable optimism and life-affirming quality make it worthy of its reputation.
]]> <![CDATA[The Golden Key and Other Stories]]> 1071835 Lilith and Phantastes are particularly famous, much of MacDonald’s best fantasy writing is found in his shorter stories. In this volume editor Glenn Sadler has compiled some of MacDonald’s finest short works—marvelous fairy tales and stories certain to delight readers familiar with MacDonald and those about to meet him for the first time.]]> 175 George MacDonald 0802818595 Martine 4
The four stories collected in this volume are all very different. The title story, 'The Golden Key', is a tremendously symbolic fairy tale about a boy who finds a golden key at the end of the rainbow and, together with a neglected girl, sets out on a journey to the country whence the shadows fall, meeting a fairy, the Old Man of the Sea, the Old Man of the Earth and the Old Man of the Fire on the way there. Like The Hobbit, it feels rather episodic at times, and I'm sure half of the imagery went over my head, but I loved the tone and otherworldliness of the story, as well as the archaic writing style. I only wish MacDonald had taken slightly more time to flesh out his tale; at times it felt like a jumble of ideas not properly worked out or joined together. On the other hand, the author's refusal to explain or go into detail definitely adds to the otherworldly feeling, so I suppose there's something to be said for it. Anyhow, 'The Golden Key' is a beautiful piece of work with a lovely old-fashioned and mythical quality.

The second story, 'The History of Photogen and Nycteris', focuses on an evil science experiment whereby a wicked witch deprives a young girl of light and keeps a young boy from ever experiencing darkness. Needless to say, the boy and the girl meet up eventually and learn to love and complement each other in all the right ways. The story is rather baffling in that you never find out why the witch embarks on her cruel experiment (the only explanation MacDonald provides is that she 'had a wolf in her mind', which is intriguing but ultimately a little unsatisfying), but that's pretty much the only complaint I have about 'Photogen and Nycteris'. In all other regards, it's a beautifully crafted, lyrical and romantic story which will teach you to look at light and dark differently and raise a glass to complementary love. I wish I had read it as a child; I would have loved it.

The third story, 'The Shadows', is an intriguing little tale about a man who meets the enigmatic Shadows and finds out how they affect our lives. A large part of the story consists of Shadows telling other Shadows what they have done to change people's lives. Part of me wanted these stories to be told another way (i.e. to be shown rather than described in dialogue), but I'm not sure how MacDonald should have gone about that; I can't come up with a better way myself. In any case, it's an imaginative tale which will have you look at shadows in a different way and curse the unromantic, Shadow-unfriendly electric light we have these days. After reading the story, I felt like lighting candles all over the house and waiting for the Shadows to show up. I can't think of a better tribute than that.

The final story, 'The Gifts of the Child Christ', is a beautiful, extremely Victorian family drama about yet another neglected child who finds love. It's a bit too mawkish and Christian for my taste (MacDonald was a minister, and it shows here), but it's well told and must have been popular with Victorian readers.

In summary, I really liked the book, and definitely look forward to checking out MacDonald's longer works now!]]> 4.25 1867 The Golden Key and Other Stories
author: George MacDonald
name: Martine
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1867
rating: 4
read at: 2009/04/01
date added: 2023/05/27
shelves: british, children-s-lit, fairy-tales, fantasy, nineteenth-century, short-stories
review:
The fantasy stories of George MacDonald (1824-1905) served as a source of inspiration to Lewis Carroll, J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Madeleine l'Engle. Lewis said that MacDonald did allegorical/mythopoeic fantasy 'better than any man', and that quote alone was enough to arouse my interest. I'm glad it did, because I would have missed out on something good if I had not discovered MacDonald. While I'm not sure I'd call him the greatest fantasy author ever, he definitely was a master of allegory. He had a wonderfully vivid imagination, a beautifully fluid writing style, a gentle sense of humour, and a keen eye for protagonists with whom readers will sympathise (in this volume, mostly lonely children). He also came up with some wonderful quests and journeys into dreamscapes, so it's easy to see why other fantasy authors would be impressed and inspired by his work.

The four stories collected in this volume are all very different. The title story, 'The Golden Key', is a tremendously symbolic fairy tale about a boy who finds a golden key at the end of the rainbow and, together with a neglected girl, sets out on a journey to the country whence the shadows fall, meeting a fairy, the Old Man of the Sea, the Old Man of the Earth and the Old Man of the Fire on the way there. Like The Hobbit, it feels rather episodic at times, and I'm sure half of the imagery went over my head, but I loved the tone and otherworldliness of the story, as well as the archaic writing style. I only wish MacDonald had taken slightly more time to flesh out his tale; at times it felt like a jumble of ideas not properly worked out or joined together. On the other hand, the author's refusal to explain or go into detail definitely adds to the otherworldly feeling, so I suppose there's something to be said for it. Anyhow, 'The Golden Key' is a beautiful piece of work with a lovely old-fashioned and mythical quality.

The second story, 'The History of Photogen and Nycteris', focuses on an evil science experiment whereby a wicked witch deprives a young girl of light and keeps a young boy from ever experiencing darkness. Needless to say, the boy and the girl meet up eventually and learn to love and complement each other in all the right ways. The story is rather baffling in that you never find out why the witch embarks on her cruel experiment (the only explanation MacDonald provides is that she 'had a wolf in her mind', which is intriguing but ultimately a little unsatisfying), but that's pretty much the only complaint I have about 'Photogen and Nycteris'. In all other regards, it's a beautifully crafted, lyrical and romantic story which will teach you to look at light and dark differently and raise a glass to complementary love. I wish I had read it as a child; I would have loved it.

The third story, 'The Shadows', is an intriguing little tale about a man who meets the enigmatic Shadows and finds out how they affect our lives. A large part of the story consists of Shadows telling other Shadows what they have done to change people's lives. Part of me wanted these stories to be told another way (i.e. to be shown rather than described in dialogue), but I'm not sure how MacDonald should have gone about that; I can't come up with a better way myself. In any case, it's an imaginative tale which will have you look at shadows in a different way and curse the unromantic, Shadow-unfriendly electric light we have these days. After reading the story, I felt like lighting candles all over the house and waiting for the Shadows to show up. I can't think of a better tribute than that.

The final story, 'The Gifts of the Child Christ', is a beautiful, extremely Victorian family drama about yet another neglected child who finds love. It's a bit too mawkish and Christian for my taste (MacDonald was a minister, and it shows here), but it's well told and must have been popular with Victorian readers.

In summary, I really liked the book, and definitely look forward to checking out MacDonald's longer works now!
]]> Rome (Art & Architecture) 1055024 Each volume of the Art & Architecture series is opulently illustrated. The highly readable texts give you concentrated information on accessing well and lesser known sites in the world of art. An image of every piece of art that is described is included, allowing readers to easily recognize the original on site.

]]> Marco Bussagli 3833112328 Martine 5 art, history Rome: Art and Architecture is a splendid 650-page book about, well, the art and architecture of Rome from early antiquity to the mid-twentieth century. Printed on heavy paper and featuring lots of gorgeous photos as well as well-written historical backgrounds, it tells the reader everything he/she wishes to know about ancient Roman mosaics, the tombs of the early Christians, mediaeval churches, Renaissance fountains, murals and paintings and what have you. I will definitely read it again before my next trip to Rome, as it's full of stunning places to visit which are just off the beaten track. What an unbelievable city, and what a great way to get to know it...]]> 4.29 1999 Rome (Art & Architecture)
author: Marco Bussagli
name: Martine
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1999
rating: 5
read at: 2007/09/01
date added: 2022/10/05
shelves: art, history
review:
Rome: Art and Architecture is a splendid 650-page book about, well, the art and architecture of Rome from early antiquity to the mid-twentieth century. Printed on heavy paper and featuring lots of gorgeous photos as well as well-written historical backgrounds, it tells the reader everything he/she wishes to know about ancient Roman mosaics, the tombs of the early Christians, mediaeval churches, Renaissance fountains, murals and paintings and what have you. I will definitely read it again before my next trip to Rome, as it's full of stunning places to visit which are just off the beaten track. What an unbelievable city, and what a great way to get to know it...
]]> The Tunnel 1405344
Sabato's first novel El Túnel (translated as The Outsider or The Tunnel), written in 1948, is framed as the confession of the painter Juan Pablo Castel, who has murdered the only woman capable of understanding him. Sabato's novels were praised by authors such as Albert Camus and Graham Greene.]]> 138 Ernesto Sabato 0224025783 Martine 0 to-read 4.00 1948 The Tunnel
author: Ernesto Sabato
name: Martine
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1948
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/03/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Idiot 107844 The Idiot is an immaculate portrait of innocence tainted by the brutal reality of human greed. This Penguin Classics edition is translated from the Russian by David McDuff, with an introduction by William Mills Todd III.

Returning to St Petersburg from a Swiss sanatorium, the gentle and naïve epileptic Prince Myshkin—the titular 'idiot'—pays a visit to his distant relative General Yepanchin and proceeds to charm the General, his wife, and his three daughters. But his life is thrown into turmoil when he chances on a photograph of the beautiful Nastasya Filippovna. Utterly infatuated with her, he soon finds himself caught up in a love triangle and drawn into a web of blackmail, betrayal, and finally, murder.]]> 732 Fyodor Dostoevsky 014044792X Martine 4 The Idiot is one of them. While it's not as tragic as, say, Crime and Punishment, nearly all of its protagonists come to a sticky end, and as always, they meet plenty of drama and intrigue on their way there. And it's all classical Russian drama and intrigue, which is to say it's full of passion, obsession, sudden mood swings, tantrums and hysterical fits. In short, The Idiot is a book full of histrionics, but I love it, because for one thing, there's something grand about all those huge emotions, and for another, Dostoyevsky is such a good writer that he gets away with making his characters behave like Greek gods. Every time I read a book of his, I come away wishing he had written his own version of Greek mythology. I'm sure it would have been an astonishing read.

As for the book at hand, it's a book about society -- more specifically, about a modern society that is so corrupt and materialistic that a good man simply cannot survive in it. In The Idiot, that good man is Prince Lyov Nikolayevitch Myshkin, who has spent most of his life in a Swiss hospital because of his epileptic fits, and now returns to the country of his youth. Although many people call him an idiot, Myshkin is not actually stupid; he is just innocent and naïve, and likely to forgive those who have trespassed against him as he is sure they meant no harm. Needless to say, there are those who dismiss him as an inconsequential figure or try to take advantage of him, but he also wins over a lot of people with his innate goodness and refusal to think ill of others. He's a Christ-like figure, but was Christ allowed to live in the society he lived in? He wasn't, and neither, sadly enough, is Myshkin, one of Dostoyevsky's more likeable protagonists. Because Russia, to which Dostoyevsky devotes some choice paragraphs, is too jaded for people like him -- too corrupt and too, well, Russian.

But The Idiot is not just a novel about a corrupt society. Ultimately (and this is probably why I like it so much) it's about love. About the different ways in which people love each other. About loving out of pity. About loving against reason. About mad, obsessive, possessive love. About angry love. About humiliating love. About corrupting love and the fear of love. About the things people do for love, the mistakes they make in the name of love, and the love they simply fail to notice because their eyes are directed elsewhere. At the heart of the book is a fascinating love triangle (or is it a quadrangle? or even a pentagon?), which makes it incredibly romantic despite all the ugly stuff that is going on at the same time. It doesn't have a happy-ever-after ending, but there's something terrifically grand and romantic about the ways in which the various lovers end, and I like that. It's realism with a dose of Romanticism with a capital R, and it works.

As always, Dostoyevsky's characterisation is superb. His naïve hero is pitched against a fabulous cast of sophisticated nobles, desperate wannabes, highly strung concubines, passionate schoolgirls, mad stalkers, dramatic nihilists, and so on. Many of the characters are larger than life, yet you somehow believe them, because let's face it, Russia is the kind place that could spawn these people, isn't it? By and large, the characters are well drawn, and if many of them are either unsympathetic or a tad capricious, so be it. There is enough passion, grandstanding and back-stabbing going on between them to keep things interesting, and plenty of twisted love, too.

The only thing I dislike about Dostoyevsky (and the one reason why I'm not giving The Idiot five stars) is his tendency to go off on tangents just when something exciting is about to happen. In The Idiot, he relates the events of an evening, tells us that the hero will have a secret and obviously important meeting with the girl he loves in the morning, and then, rather than relating the events of the next morning in the next chapter, proceeds to spend four chapters (some sixty pages altogether) telling the reader what happens at the Prince's house late at night, none of which has anything to do with the upcoming meeting with the girl. I'm sure I'm not the only reader who felt cheated there. Other than the tangents, though, Dostoyevsky is a superb writer, and The Idiot is as fine an example of classic Russian literature as you're likely to find anywhere (provided you like long dialogue and slightly mad characters). I'd give it 4.5 stars if I could, but in the absence of half stars, four will have to do.

(And for those of you who care about translations: I read the Bantam version by Constance Garnett and was quite happy with it.)]]> 4.06 1869 The Idiot
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Martine
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1869
rating: 4
read at: 2008/08/01
date added: 2021/06/06
shelves: continental-european, nineteenth-century, psychological-drama, russian
review:
Are there countries in the world which are more likely to produce depressing literature than others? If so, Russia must be pretty much top of the list. I have yet to read a Russian novel which ends well for all the protagonists. I can only think of a few in which things end well for even a few of the protagonists. And Dostoyevsky of course loves his tragedies. The Idiot is one of them. While it's not as tragic as, say, Crime and Punishment, nearly all of its protagonists come to a sticky end, and as always, they meet plenty of drama and intrigue on their way there. And it's all classical Russian drama and intrigue, which is to say it's full of passion, obsession, sudden mood swings, tantrums and hysterical fits. In short, The Idiot is a book full of histrionics, but I love it, because for one thing, there's something grand about all those huge emotions, and for another, Dostoyevsky is such a good writer that he gets away with making his characters behave like Greek gods. Every time I read a book of his, I come away wishing he had written his own version of Greek mythology. I'm sure it would have been an astonishing read.

As for the book at hand, it's a book about society -- more specifically, about a modern society that is so corrupt and materialistic that a good man simply cannot survive in it. In The Idiot, that good man is Prince Lyov Nikolayevitch Myshkin, who has spent most of his life in a Swiss hospital because of his epileptic fits, and now returns to the country of his youth. Although many people call him an idiot, Myshkin is not actually stupid; he is just innocent and naïve, and likely to forgive those who have trespassed against him as he is sure they meant no harm. Needless to say, there are those who dismiss him as an inconsequential figure or try to take advantage of him, but he also wins over a lot of people with his innate goodness and refusal to think ill of others. He's a Christ-like figure, but was Christ allowed to live in the society he lived in? He wasn't, and neither, sadly enough, is Myshkin, one of Dostoyevsky's more likeable protagonists. Because Russia, to which Dostoyevsky devotes some choice paragraphs, is too jaded for people like him -- too corrupt and too, well, Russian.

But The Idiot is not just a novel about a corrupt society. Ultimately (and this is probably why I like it so much) it's about love. About the different ways in which people love each other. About loving out of pity. About loving against reason. About mad, obsessive, possessive love. About angry love. About humiliating love. About corrupting love and the fear of love. About the things people do for love, the mistakes they make in the name of love, and the love they simply fail to notice because their eyes are directed elsewhere. At the heart of the book is a fascinating love triangle (or is it a quadrangle? or even a pentagon?), which makes it incredibly romantic despite all the ugly stuff that is going on at the same time. It doesn't have a happy-ever-after ending, but there's something terrifically grand and romantic about the ways in which the various lovers end, and I like that. It's realism with a dose of Romanticism with a capital R, and it works.

As always, Dostoyevsky's characterisation is superb. His naïve hero is pitched against a fabulous cast of sophisticated nobles, desperate wannabes, highly strung concubines, passionate schoolgirls, mad stalkers, dramatic nihilists, and so on. Many of the characters are larger than life, yet you somehow believe them, because let's face it, Russia is the kind place that could spawn these people, isn't it? By and large, the characters are well drawn, and if many of them are either unsympathetic or a tad capricious, so be it. There is enough passion, grandstanding and back-stabbing going on between them to keep things interesting, and plenty of twisted love, too.

The only thing I dislike about Dostoyevsky (and the one reason why I'm not giving The Idiot five stars) is his tendency to go off on tangents just when something exciting is about to happen. In The Idiot, he relates the events of an evening, tells us that the hero will have a secret and obviously important meeting with the girl he loves in the morning, and then, rather than relating the events of the next morning in the next chapter, proceeds to spend four chapters (some sixty pages altogether) telling the reader what happens at the Prince's house late at night, none of which has anything to do with the upcoming meeting with the girl. I'm sure I'm not the only reader who felt cheated there. Other than the tangents, though, Dostoyevsky is a superb writer, and The Idiot is as fine an example of classic Russian literature as you're likely to find anywhere (provided you like long dialogue and slightly mad characters). I'd give it 4.5 stars if I could, but in the absence of half stars, four will have to do.

(And for those of you who care about translations: I read the Bantam version by Constance Garnett and was quite happy with it.)
]]> The Neverending Story 70946 Read the book that inspired the classic coming-of-age film! From award-winning German author Michael Ende, The Neverending Story is a classic tale of one boy and the book that magically comes to life.

When Bastian happens upon an old book called The Neverending Story, he's swept into the magical world of Fantastica--so much that he finds he has actually become a character in the story! And when he realizes that this mysteriously enchanted world is in great danger, he also discovers that he is the one chosen to save it. Can Bastian overcome the barrier between reality and his imagination in order to save Fantastica?]]> 445 Michael Ende 0140386335 Martine 0 to-read 4.13 1979 The Neverending Story
author: Michael Ende
name: Martine
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1979
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/10/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Devil's Dictionary 786533 256 Ambrose Bierce 0195126270 Martine 0 to-read 4.12 1911 The Devil's Dictionary
author: Ambrose Bierce
name: Martine
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1911
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/11/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Clockwork Orange 8810
The basis for one of the most notorious films ever made, A Clockwork Orange is both a virtuoso performance from an electrifying prose stylist and a serious exploration of the morality of free will.

'I do not know of any other writer who has done as much with language ... a very funny book'
William S. Burroughs]]> 159 Anthony Burgess 0141182601 Martine 5 A Clockwork Orange is one of those books which everyone has heard of but which few people have actually read �- mostly, I think, because it is preceded by a reputation of shocking ultra-violence. I’m not going to deny here that the book contains violence. It features lengthy descriptions of heinous crimes, and they’re vivid descriptions, full of excitement. (Burgess later wrote in his autobiography: ‘I was sickened by my own excitement at setting it down.�) Yet it does not glorify violence, nor is it a book about violence per se. Rather it’s an exploration of the morality of free will. Of whether it is better to choose to be bad than to be conditioned to be good. Of alienation and how to deal with the excesses to which such alienation may lead. And ultimately, of one man’s decision to say goodbye to all that. (At least in the UK version. The American version, on which Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation was based, ends on a less optimistic note.) In short, it’s a novella of ideas which just happens to contain a fair bit of violence.

It is also quite an artistic and linguistic achievement. Those who have seen the film will know that Alex (the anti-hero) and his droogs (friends) speak a made-up language full of Russian loanwords, Shakespearean and Biblical influences and Cockney rhyming slang. Initially this nadsat language was nearly incomprehensible to me, and my first response to it was bad. I found myself cursing Burgess, telling him that it wasn’t fair to put his readers through something like that. (If I want to read an incomprehensible book, I’ll read Finnegans Wake, thank you very much.) However, Burgess takes great care to introduce his new words in an understandable way, so after a few pages I got the hang of the nadsat lingo, and after a few more pages I actually began to enjoy it, because I’m enough of a linguist to go in for that sort of thing. I found myself loving the Russian loanwords, rejoicing when I recognised a German loanword among them and enjoying the Shakespearean quality of Alex� dialogues. I finished the book with an urgent wish to learn Russian and read more Shakespeare. I doubt many readers will respond to the book in that way (not everyone shares my enthusiasm for languages and classical stuff), but my point is: you’ll get used to the lingo, and at some point you’ll begin to admire it, because for one thing, Burgess is awfully consistent about it, and for another, it just sounds so damned good. I mean, if you’re going to come up with a new word for ‘crazy�, you might as well choose bezoomny, right? Because it actually sounds mad. Doesn’t it?

Anyhow, there’s more to A Clockwork Orange than just philosophical ideas and linguistic pyrotechnics. The writing itself is unexpectedly lyrical, and not just when it deals with violence. Some of the most beautiful passages in the book deal with music. More specifically, classical music, because for all his wicked ways, Alex has a passion for classical music. He particularly adores Beethoven, an adoration I happen to share. I came away from the book thinking I might consent to becoming Alex� devotchka (woman, wife) simply because he is capable of getting carried away by Beethoven’s Ninth and hates having it spoilt for him. He’s cultured, is Alex, and while his culturedness obviously does not equal civilisation and goodness (a point he himself is quick to make), it does put him a notch above the average hooligan. It’s the apparent dichotomy between Alex� tastes in art and his taste for violence which makes him such an interesting protagonist and which keeps you following his exploits to their not entirely believable (but good) conclusion.

In short, then, A Clockwork Orange is an excellent book �- a bit challenging at first, but gripping and interesting and full of style and ideas. Not many books can claim as much.
]]> 3.97 1962 A Clockwork Orange
author: Anthony Burgess
name: Martine
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1962
rating: 5
read at: 2008/03/01
date added: 2019/06/06
shelves: british, crime, favourites, film, modern-fiction, postmodern, dystopia
review:
A Clockwork Orange is one of those books which everyone has heard of but which few people have actually read �- mostly, I think, because it is preceded by a reputation of shocking ultra-violence. I’m not going to deny here that the book contains violence. It features lengthy descriptions of heinous crimes, and they’re vivid descriptions, full of excitement. (Burgess later wrote in his autobiography: ‘I was sickened by my own excitement at setting it down.�) Yet it does not glorify violence, nor is it a book about violence per se. Rather it’s an exploration of the morality of free will. Of whether it is better to choose to be bad than to be conditioned to be good. Of alienation and how to deal with the excesses to which such alienation may lead. And ultimately, of one man’s decision to say goodbye to all that. (At least in the UK version. The American version, on which Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation was based, ends on a less optimistic note.) In short, it’s a novella of ideas which just happens to contain a fair bit of violence.

It is also quite an artistic and linguistic achievement. Those who have seen the film will know that Alex (the anti-hero) and his droogs (friends) speak a made-up language full of Russian loanwords, Shakespearean and Biblical influences and Cockney rhyming slang. Initially this nadsat language was nearly incomprehensible to me, and my first response to it was bad. I found myself cursing Burgess, telling him that it wasn’t fair to put his readers through something like that. (If I want to read an incomprehensible book, I’ll read Finnegans Wake, thank you very much.) However, Burgess takes great care to introduce his new words in an understandable way, so after a few pages I got the hang of the nadsat lingo, and after a few more pages I actually began to enjoy it, because I’m enough of a linguist to go in for that sort of thing. I found myself loving the Russian loanwords, rejoicing when I recognised a German loanword among them and enjoying the Shakespearean quality of Alex� dialogues. I finished the book with an urgent wish to learn Russian and read more Shakespeare. I doubt many readers will respond to the book in that way (not everyone shares my enthusiasm for languages and classical stuff), but my point is: you’ll get used to the lingo, and at some point you’ll begin to admire it, because for one thing, Burgess is awfully consistent about it, and for another, it just sounds so damned good. I mean, if you’re going to come up with a new word for ‘crazy�, you might as well choose bezoomny, right? Because it actually sounds mad. Doesn’t it?

Anyhow, there’s more to A Clockwork Orange than just philosophical ideas and linguistic pyrotechnics. The writing itself is unexpectedly lyrical, and not just when it deals with violence. Some of the most beautiful passages in the book deal with music. More specifically, classical music, because for all his wicked ways, Alex has a passion for classical music. He particularly adores Beethoven, an adoration I happen to share. I came away from the book thinking I might consent to becoming Alex� devotchka (woman, wife) simply because he is capable of getting carried away by Beethoven’s Ninth and hates having it spoilt for him. He’s cultured, is Alex, and while his culturedness obviously does not equal civilisation and goodness (a point he himself is quick to make), it does put him a notch above the average hooligan. It’s the apparent dichotomy between Alex� tastes in art and his taste for violence which makes him such an interesting protagonist and which keeps you following his exploits to their not entirely believable (but good) conclusion.

In short, then, A Clockwork Orange is an excellent book �- a bit challenging at first, but gripping and interesting and full of style and ideas. Not many books can claim as much.

]]> The Stars Tennis Balls 462801 An alternate cover for this isbn can be found here.

Ned Maddstone has the world at his feet. He is handsome, talented and about to go to Cambridge, after which he is expected to follow his father into politics. But an unfortunate confrontation with a boy in his school results in a prank that goes badly wrong and suddenly he’s incarcerated � without chance of release. So begins a year long process of torment and hopelessness, which will destroy his very identity, until almost nothing remains of him but this unquenchable desire for revenge.

Inspired by the Count of Monte Cristo, Fry’s psychological thriller is written with the pace, wit and shrewd insight that we have come to expect from one of our finest novelists.]]> 436 Stephen Fry Martine 0 to-read 3.75 2000 The Stars Tennis Balls
author: Stephen Fry
name: Martine
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/11/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Norwegian Wood 818108 Alternate cover edition here.

When he hears her favourite Beatles song, Toru Watanabe recalls his first love Naoko, the girlfriend of his best friend Kizuki. Immediately he is transported back almost twenty years to his student days in Tokyo, adrift in a world of uneasy friendships, casual sex, passion, loss and desire - to a time when an impetuous young woman called Midori marches into his life and he has to choose between the future and the past.]]> 389 Haruki Murakami 0099448823 Martine 5 Norwegian Wood is a beautifully evocative account of Japanese student life in the late 1960s. It's a bit sentimental by Murakami's standards, but boy, is it engaging. At turns humorous, fascinating, melancholy and poignant, this story about an unusual student who is torn between two rather unusual women is probably the best book I've read this year. I just love the characters Murakami comes up with. Even the minor characters are special and endearing.
]]> 3.99 1987 Norwegian Wood
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Martine
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1987
rating: 5
read at: 2007/08/01
date added: 2017/04/23
shelves: modern-fiction, asian, favourites
review:
Norwegian Wood is a beautifully evocative account of Japanese student life in the late 1960s. It's a bit sentimental by Murakami's standards, but boy, is it engaging. At turns humorous, fascinating, melancholy and poignant, this story about an unusual student who is torn between two rather unusual women is probably the best book I've read this year. I just love the characters Murakami comes up with. Even the minor characters are special and endearing.

]]> Down Under 42876 Alternative cover editions for this ISBN can be found here, here, here and here

It is the driest, flattest, hottest, most desiccated, infertile and climatically aggressive of all the inhabited continents and still Australia teems with life - a large portion of it quite deadly. In fact, Australia has more things that can kill you in a very nasty way than anywhere else.

Ignoring such dangers - and yet curiously obsessed by them - Bill Bryson journeyed to Australia and promptly fell in love with the country. And who can blame him? The people are cheerful, extrovert, quick-witted and unfailingly obliging; their cities are safe and clean and nearly always built on water; the food is excellent; the beer is cold and the sun nearly always shines. Life doesn't get much better than this...]]> 398 Bill Bryson 055299703X Martine 4 Short History of Nearly Everything, an ambitious attempt to trace the history of life, the universe and everything in just 574 pages. While many of the scientific discoveries outlined in the book were a little beyond me, I thoroughly enjoyed Bryson's descriptions of the larger-than-life personalities behind the discoveries, which really brought the science described to life. So when I found out that he had also written a travelogue of a journey across the country I may soon call home -- Australia -- I simply had to read it.

Australia, for those of you who have never been there, is one of the most colourful places on earth. It has a history so bizarre that it makes China's seem normal by comparison. It has insane expanses of the most arid desert imaginable, as well as some of the world's most beautiful beaches, where unfortunately you can't swim due to the prevalence of sharks, crocs, box jellyfish, stingrays and murderous rip currents. It houses beyond a shadow of a doubt the world's most interesting flora and fauna, including twelve-foot earthworms and living fossils. (And you thought kangaroos were exotic. Ha.) And if all that weren't interesting enough, the locals are slightly mad. They eat meat pies floating in pea soup, are crazy about cricket and consider shorts and knee-length socks proper attire for middle-aged bus drivers. In short, it's a unique place and I love it. I look forward to moving there in a few months' time.

Bill Bryson also loves Australia, and it shows. While he likes to remind his readers of the country's amazing collection of deathly animals (over and over again) and poke fun at the locals and their weird habits, his affection for the place shines through in every chapter, and it's quite infectious. By describing his own travels and those of early settlers, explorers and naturalists, he provides the reader with an appreciation for how vast and unwelcoming the country is, and how utterly unique. He provides background information on events of which few non-Australians will have heard (such as the fact that a nuclear bomb may have been detonated in the outback without anyone noticing, and that an Australian Prime Minister once vanished, never to be seen again), waxes lyrical on trees and animals so bizarre that you'll want to hop on the first plane to Australia to check them out for yourself (again, kangaroos are only the beginning), explains why you should go and see Ayers Rock even if you've already seen hundreds of photos of it, and intersperses all this useful information with a winning combination of self-deprecating humour, bizarre anecdotes, absurd dialogue and entertaining accounts of encounters with fellow travellers and locals. The resulting book is not only completely recognisable to anyone who has visited Australia, but hugely appealing to anyone who hasn't. I doubt anyone can read this book without wishing to book a flight to Oz immediately afterwards.

If I have any complaint about Down Under, it is that there is too little of it. While Bryson's writing is entertaining and informative, his choice of places to visit and describe seems rather random and limited. I wish he had done more travelling, gone further into the interior of the country and left all traces of luxury behind him for a while, so as to emulate the pioneers and explorers whose exploits he relates with such gusto. I also think the book would have benefited from slightly more rigorous editing, as parts of it seem rather hastily written. For all its small flaws, though, Down Under (released in the US as In a Sunburned Country) is a fascinating read which has whetted my appetite for more Bryson travelogues. And for a return to Oz, but that's another story.
]]> 4.07 2000 Down Under
author: Bill Bryson
name: Martine
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at: 2008/05/01
date added: 2016/04/08
shelves: history, non-fiction, travel-writing
review:
I developed a taste for Bill Bryson last year when I read his Short History of Nearly Everything, an ambitious attempt to trace the history of life, the universe and everything in just 574 pages. While many of the scientific discoveries outlined in the book were a little beyond me, I thoroughly enjoyed Bryson's descriptions of the larger-than-life personalities behind the discoveries, which really brought the science described to life. So when I found out that he had also written a travelogue of a journey across the country I may soon call home -- Australia -- I simply had to read it.

Australia, for those of you who have never been there, is one of the most colourful places on earth. It has a history so bizarre that it makes China's seem normal by comparison. It has insane expanses of the most arid desert imaginable, as well as some of the world's most beautiful beaches, where unfortunately you can't swim due to the prevalence of sharks, crocs, box jellyfish, stingrays and murderous rip currents. It houses beyond a shadow of a doubt the world's most interesting flora and fauna, including twelve-foot earthworms and living fossils. (And you thought kangaroos were exotic. Ha.) And if all that weren't interesting enough, the locals are slightly mad. They eat meat pies floating in pea soup, are crazy about cricket and consider shorts and knee-length socks proper attire for middle-aged bus drivers. In short, it's a unique place and I love it. I look forward to moving there in a few months' time.

Bill Bryson also loves Australia, and it shows. While he likes to remind his readers of the country's amazing collection of deathly animals (over and over again) and poke fun at the locals and their weird habits, his affection for the place shines through in every chapter, and it's quite infectious. By describing his own travels and those of early settlers, explorers and naturalists, he provides the reader with an appreciation for how vast and unwelcoming the country is, and how utterly unique. He provides background information on events of which few non-Australians will have heard (such as the fact that a nuclear bomb may have been detonated in the outback without anyone noticing, and that an Australian Prime Minister once vanished, never to be seen again), waxes lyrical on trees and animals so bizarre that you'll want to hop on the first plane to Australia to check them out for yourself (again, kangaroos are only the beginning), explains why you should go and see Ayers Rock even if you've already seen hundreds of photos of it, and intersperses all this useful information with a winning combination of self-deprecating humour, bizarre anecdotes, absurd dialogue and entertaining accounts of encounters with fellow travellers and locals. The resulting book is not only completely recognisable to anyone who has visited Australia, but hugely appealing to anyone who hasn't. I doubt anyone can read this book without wishing to book a flight to Oz immediately afterwards.

If I have any complaint about Down Under, it is that there is too little of it. While Bryson's writing is entertaining and informative, his choice of places to visit and describe seems rather random and limited. I wish he had done more travelling, gone further into the interior of the country and left all traces of luxury behind him for a while, so as to emulate the pioneers and explorers whose exploits he relates with such gusto. I also think the book would have benefited from slightly more rigorous editing, as parts of it seem rather hastily written. For all its small flaws, though, Down Under (released in the US as In a Sunburned Country) is a fascinating read which has whetted my appetite for more Bryson travelogues. And for a return to Oz, but that's another story.

]]> Pride and Prejudice 1888 --back cover]]> 333 Jane Austen Martine 5 Pride and Prejudice that hasn't been said countless times already? It is simply one of the best romances ever written. Sure, it is limited in scope, as Charlotte Bronte so kindly pointed out, but who cares when the writing is so exquisite and the characters so memorable? The fact that I know half of the book by heart says it all.

Swoon.
]]> 4.26 1813 Pride and Prejudice
author: Jane Austen
name: Martine
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1813
rating: 5
read at: 2006/01/01
date added: 2016/03/05
shelves: british, favourites, intelligent-chick-lit, nineteenth-century, romance, film
review:
What can I say about Pride and Prejudice that hasn't been said countless times already? It is simply one of the best romances ever written. Sure, it is limited in scope, as Charlotte Bronte so kindly pointed out, but who cares when the writing is so exquisite and the characters so memorable? The fact that I know half of the book by heart says it all.

Swoon.

]]> <![CDATA[The Contract With God Trilogy: Life on Dropsie Avenue (The Contract With God Trilogy, #1-3)]]> 33472 alternate cover for ISBN 9780393061055

Will Eisner (1917�2005) saw himself as "a graphic witness reporting on life, death, heartbreak, and the never-ending struggle to prevail." The publication of A Contract With God when Eisner was sixty-one proved to be a watershed moment both for him and for comic literature. It marked the birth of the modern graphic novel and the beginning of an era when serious cartoonists could be liberated from their stultifying comic-book format.

More than a quarter-century after the initial publication of A Contract With God, and in the last few months of his life, Eisner chose to combine the three fictional works he had set on Dropsie Avenue, the mythical street of his youth in Depression-era New York City.

As the dramas unfold in A Contract With God, the first book in this new trilogy, it is at 55 Dropsie Avenue where Frimme Hersh, the pious Jew, first loses his beloved daughter, then breaks his contract with his maker, and ends up as a slumlord; it is on Dropsie Avenue where a street singer, befriended by an aging diva, is so beholden to the bottle that he fails to grasp his chance for stardom; and it is there that a scheming little girl named Rosie poisons a depraved super’s dog before doing in the super as well.

In the second book, A Life Force, declared by R. Crumb to be "a masterpiece," Eisner re-creates himself in his protagonist, Jacob Shtarkah, whose existential search reflected Eisner’s own lifelong struggle. Chronicling not only the Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression but also the rise of Nazism and the spread of left-wing politics, Eisner combined the miniaturist sensibility of Henry Roth with the grand social themes of novelists such as Dos Passos and Steinbeck.

Finally, in Dropsie Avenue: The Neighborhood, Eisner graphically traces the social trajectory of this mythic avenue over four centuries, creating a sweeping panorama of the city and its waves of new residents—the Dutch, English, Irish, Jews, African Americans, and Puerto Ricans—whose faces changed yet whose lives presented an unending "story of life, death, and resurrection."

The Contract With God Trilogy is a mesmerizing, fictional chronicle of a universal American experience and Eisner�' most poignant and enduring literary legacy.

]]> 498 Will Eisner Martine 0 to-read 4.25 2005 The Contract With God Trilogy: Life on Dropsie Avenue (The Contract With God Trilogy, #1-3)
author: Will Eisner
name: Martine
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/07/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Life of Pi 477725
The scene is set for one of the most extraordinary works of fiction in recent years.]]> 319 Yann Martel 184195392X Martine 4 Life of Pi (winner of the 2002 Booker Prize) got a tremendous lot of acclaim for such an unbelievable and ridiculous story. And rightly so, for not only does Yann Martel get away with spinning an absurd yarn, but he turns it into something quite compelling and captivating.

On the surface, Life of Pi is the memoir of a Canadian Indian who as a precocious sixteen-year-old was the lone survivor of a shipwreck and found himself aboard a lifeboat with a hyena, a zebra, an orang-utan and a 450-pound Bengal tiger. Their struggle for survival on the ocean is the main body of the story, and the part that most people remember. It is tragic and bloody and exciting and rich in insight and detail -- a compulsively readable account of man's interaction with himself and the powers that be as well as a full-blown instruction manual on what to do if you're ever caught at sea with remnants of your Dad's zoo. It's about wisdom and resourcefulness, about fate and faith and dealing with the hand you're dealt, and it's great.

Yet there's more to the book than the shipwreck story. For starters, there is the introduction to the boy's life, which goes on for about a hundred pages and which I absolutely loved. Like the rest of the book, it's a concatenation of unlikely facts and pieces of information, mostly about zoology. If it's not the part of the book that people remember, that's because there is less at stake; it doesn't deal with survival. It is, however, extremely well written, well researched and cleverly put together, and simply wonderful to read if you like animals and tales of unusual childhoods.

And then there's the ending, which to me is the weakest part of the book. I have to admit I didn't really care for the part of the story which is set on the carnivorous island. I was completely into the story until that point, riding a huge wave of suspension of disbelief, but the island (no matter how fascinating its description) rather ruined things for me. I didn't really care for the alternative history in the last few pages, either, but I can see where Martel wanted to go with it. Even more than a survival kit, a zoological encyclopaedia or an account of the amazing resilience of mankind in extraordinary circumstances, Life of Pi is a story about stories and how they affect us. As with the three religions to which the protagonist adheres, and as with the lessons his father teaches him as a child, it's not really about the particulars, but rather about the grand idea. And what an idea that is. And what a terrific story, give or take a few minor details.
]]> 3.91 2001 Life of Pi
author: Yann Martel
name: Martine
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2001
rating: 4
read at: 2005/10/01
date added: 2015/06/06
shelves: memoirs, modern-fiction, north-american, religion, magic-realism
review:
Life of Pi (winner of the 2002 Booker Prize) got a tremendous lot of acclaim for such an unbelievable and ridiculous story. And rightly so, for not only does Yann Martel get away with spinning an absurd yarn, but he turns it into something quite compelling and captivating.

On the surface, Life of Pi is the memoir of a Canadian Indian who as a precocious sixteen-year-old was the lone survivor of a shipwreck and found himself aboard a lifeboat with a hyena, a zebra, an orang-utan and a 450-pound Bengal tiger. Their struggle for survival on the ocean is the main body of the story, and the part that most people remember. It is tragic and bloody and exciting and rich in insight and detail -- a compulsively readable account of man's interaction with himself and the powers that be as well as a full-blown instruction manual on what to do if you're ever caught at sea with remnants of your Dad's zoo. It's about wisdom and resourcefulness, about fate and faith and dealing with the hand you're dealt, and it's great.

Yet there's more to the book than the shipwreck story. For starters, there is the introduction to the boy's life, which goes on for about a hundred pages and which I absolutely loved. Like the rest of the book, it's a concatenation of unlikely facts and pieces of information, mostly about zoology. If it's not the part of the book that people remember, that's because there is less at stake; it doesn't deal with survival. It is, however, extremely well written, well researched and cleverly put together, and simply wonderful to read if you like animals and tales of unusual childhoods.

And then there's the ending, which to me is the weakest part of the book. I have to admit I didn't really care for the part of the story which is set on the carnivorous island. I was completely into the story until that point, riding a huge wave of suspension of disbelief, but the island (no matter how fascinating its description) rather ruined things for me. I didn't really care for the alternative history in the last few pages, either, but I can see where Martel wanted to go with it. Even more than a survival kit, a zoological encyclopaedia or an account of the amazing resilience of mankind in extraordinary circumstances, Life of Pi is a story about stories and how they affect us. As with the three religions to which the protagonist adheres, and as with the lessons his father teaches him as a child, it's not really about the particulars, but rather about the grand idea. And what an idea that is. And what a terrific story, give or take a few minor details.

]]> Neuromancer 14775 303 William Gibson 8585887907 Martine 3 Neuromancer, the book that started the cyberpunk craze back in the mid-eighties. The first few chapters were so disjointed and deliberately obscure that I wasn't sure what was going on, nor whether I actually cared. Then things gradually started to fall into place. Seventy pages into the story I got the hang of Gibson's style, one hundred pages in I actually began to enjoy it, and now that I've finished it, I actually look forward to reading it again at some point. I'm not sure if that makes Neuromancer a good book, but it's certainly interesting.

As the blurb has it, Neuromancer is about Case, who was the sharpest data thief in the matrix, until an ex-employer crippled his nervous system. Now a new employer has recruited him for a last-chance run against an unthinkably powerful artificial intelligence. With a mirror-eyed girl street-samurai riding shotgun, he is sent on an adventure in a futuristic world where the lines between fantasy and reality are blurred and where nothing is quite what it seems, to fight an enemy he doesn't know. On the way to the final showdown, the reader is taken to Japan, America, Turkey and a few imaginary places, gets to meet quite a few bizarre people (if they are even human) and generally wonders what the f*** is going on.

You have to give Gibson credit for the virtual reality world he created over twenty years ago, long before the Internet and virtual reality as we know it were a fact. His futurama is a pretty fantastic and well-realised place, with characters of its own, a vernacular of its own, the works. The reader is thrown headlong into this world and is not given any explanations along the way, which makes the first few chapters hard to get through. After a while, though, you start getting a feel for the patois, and the book becomes much easier to read. However, it still has a few major flaws, which only become more obvious as you continue reading. For one thing, the characters aren't developed nearly as well as the world in which they live. They are interesting, but Gibson doesn't give them an awful lot to do or feel, which is a great shame. The same is true for the story as a whole. While there are plenty of interesting ideas floating in there, somehow they won't gel into a proper story, as Gibson is so busy focusing on the cool world he has created that he forgets to add such basic things as backgrounds, emotions, story arcs and smooth transitions. Even more damagingly, he fails to provide his heroes with a clear quest. While their actions and adventures are quite exciting, it is not clear exactly who or what they're up against or what they're trying to achieve or prevent, which makes it hard to identify with them or root for them. Throw in a rather vague bad guy (or bad guys?) and you have quite a few examples of bad story-telling -- things that any creative writing teacher would warn his students to steer clear of, and which have no business being in a book as famous and acclaimed as this one.

And yet... For all its flaws, Neuromancer IS pretty cool, and I genuinely look forward to re-reading it at some point. I just wish Gibson had made better use of the superb ingredients he's working with. Neuromancer could have been a brilliant book; as it is, it's merely interesting.
]]> 3.83 1984 Neuromancer
author: William Gibson
name: Martine
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1984
rating: 3
read at: 2008/01/01
date added: 2015/03/16
shelves: science-fiction, modern-fiction, north-american, blokey-books, dystopia, postmodern
review:
I'll confess I had a hard time getting into Neuromancer, the book that started the cyberpunk craze back in the mid-eighties. The first few chapters were so disjointed and deliberately obscure that I wasn't sure what was going on, nor whether I actually cared. Then things gradually started to fall into place. Seventy pages into the story I got the hang of Gibson's style, one hundred pages in I actually began to enjoy it, and now that I've finished it, I actually look forward to reading it again at some point. I'm not sure if that makes Neuromancer a good book, but it's certainly interesting.

As the blurb has it, Neuromancer is about Case, who was the sharpest data thief in the matrix, until an ex-employer crippled his nervous system. Now a new employer has recruited him for a last-chance run against an unthinkably powerful artificial intelligence. With a mirror-eyed girl street-samurai riding shotgun, he is sent on an adventure in a futuristic world where the lines between fantasy and reality are blurred and where nothing is quite what it seems, to fight an enemy he doesn't know. On the way to the final showdown, the reader is taken to Japan, America, Turkey and a few imaginary places, gets to meet quite a few bizarre people (if they are even human) and generally wonders what the f*** is going on.

You have to give Gibson credit for the virtual reality world he created over twenty years ago, long before the Internet and virtual reality as we know it were a fact. His futurama is a pretty fantastic and well-realised place, with characters of its own, a vernacular of its own, the works. The reader is thrown headlong into this world and is not given any explanations along the way, which makes the first few chapters hard to get through. After a while, though, you start getting a feel for the patois, and the book becomes much easier to read. However, it still has a few major flaws, which only become more obvious as you continue reading. For one thing, the characters aren't developed nearly as well as the world in which they live. They are interesting, but Gibson doesn't give them an awful lot to do or feel, which is a great shame. The same is true for the story as a whole. While there are plenty of interesting ideas floating in there, somehow they won't gel into a proper story, as Gibson is so busy focusing on the cool world he has created that he forgets to add such basic things as backgrounds, emotions, story arcs and smooth transitions. Even more damagingly, he fails to provide his heroes with a clear quest. While their actions and adventures are quite exciting, it is not clear exactly who or what they're up against or what they're trying to achieve or prevent, which makes it hard to identify with them or root for them. Throw in a rather vague bad guy (or bad guys?) and you have quite a few examples of bad story-telling -- things that any creative writing teacher would warn his students to steer clear of, and which have no business being in a book as famous and acclaimed as this one.

And yet... For all its flaws, Neuromancer IS pretty cool, and I genuinely look forward to re-reading it at some point. I just wish Gibson had made better use of the superb ingredients he's working with. Neuromancer could have been a brilliant book; as it is, it's merely interesting.

]]> <![CDATA[The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, Volume 1]]> 143313
(This edition was originaly listed as "the Arabic illustrated edition for the four parts of the book, published by the
General Egyptian Book Organization. However, the ISBN and cover image are for the Wordsworth Reference edition in English and the record has been accordingly updated.)]]> 408 James George Frazer 1404304789 Martine 0 to-read 3.97 1890 The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, Volume 1
author: James George Frazer
name: Martine
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1890
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/10/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Six Characters in Search of an Author and Other Plays]]> 12113 Pirandello (1867-1936) is the founding architect of twentieth-century drama, brilliantly innovatory in his forms and themes, and in the combined energy, imagination and visual colours of his theatre.This volume of plays, translated from the Italian by Mark Musa, opens with Six Characters in Search of an Author, Pirandello's most popular and controversial work in which six characters invade the stage and demand to be included in the play. The tragedy Henry IV dramatizes the lucid madness of a man who may be King. In So It Is (If You Think So) the townspeople exercise a morbid curiosity attempting to discover 'the truth' about the Ponza family. Each of these plays can lay claim to being Pirandello's masterpiece, and in exploring the nature of human personality each one stretches the resources of drama to their limits.]]> 224 Luigi Pirandello 014018922X Martine 0 to-read 3.93 1921 Six Characters in Search of an Author and Other Plays
author: Luigi Pirandello
name: Martine
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1921
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/06/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Making of Victorian Sexual Attitudes]]> 904262 progressive, optimistic, emancipated--and hence modern. The prequel to this book, The Making of Victorian Sexuality , presented a detailed analysis of Victorian sexual behaviour. In this sequel, Michael Mason analyses the ideological context of the sexual moralism of nineteenth-century
England.]]> Michael Mason 0192853198 Martine 2
Sadly, Michael Mason, the author of The Making of Victorian Sexuality, is not a good story-teller. Rather than aiming, journalist-style, to inform his reader in a readable and light-hearted way of the truths and untruths of the myths surrounding the Victorian era, he set out to write a scholarly treatise and succeeded rather too well. He spends a long first chapter detailing his research methods, which I'm sure is vital from a scholarly point of view but doesn't make for very exciting reading. He also frequently loses himself in technical details and theoretical debates of a kind which may be of interest to fellow scholars but won't interest many lay readers. And on top of that, he has a maddening tendency to bring up potentially good stories only to refuse to go into detail. For instance, on several occasions he describes at length dull practices which were apparently common in England and closes by stating that 'things were quite different in Scotland'. He then completely fails to explain how things were different in Scotland, which might have made for a better read than the preceding paragraphs. Likewise, he has a habit of mentioning fascinating-sounding titbits about prostitutes, kept women and their men, only to declare primly that they are not the subject of this book and drop the subject altogether -- an act of literary sadism if ever I saw one. And finally, he completely fails to acknowledge homosexuality in the book. I know homosexuality wasn't particularly well documented during the Victorian era, but surely it's worth some mention?

To be fair, there are interesting facts in the book, in between pages of stultifying tedium. I was quite startled to learn, for instance, that comparison of dates of marriage and dates of baptism of first child has shown that around 40 per cent of English brides in the first half of the nineteenth century were pregnant; in some areas the rate pushed up past the half-way point as the century advanced. So much for Victorian girls being chaste, then. These eyebrow-raising numbers are backed up by statements from contemporary foreign visitors who asserted that English girls were much freer than their American and continental European counterparts and that they were generally given ample opportunity to indulge in 'vices' (especially in the upper classes, it would seem). Interestingly enough, the tables were turned after marriage. While nineteenth-century American and continental European women generally gained much freedom upon marriage, English brides allegedly largely lost theirs, being kept on a tight leash after getting married. Apparently, that too was different in Scotland, but as usual, Mason refuses to go into detail, focusing instead on far less interesting material. He does, however, do a creditable job proving that England's harried housewives might have had better sex lives than previously assumed. Think the term 'female orgasm' is a recent coinage? Not true. Apparently, Victorian men were all too aware that women were capable of climaxing, too, and tried hard to make their wives/mistresses come -- not just because this meant they had succeeded in giving pleasure, but also because female orgasms were said to be a prerequisite for conception. The latter belief may have inhibited a few women (I'd think twice about enjoying sex, too, if I believed it might lead to my fifth pregnancy in as many years), but overall it seems that many Victorian wives enjoyed the act of love-making, and that their husbands did their best to satisfy them. So much for 'lie back and think of England', then.

Mason also convincingly debunks a few other clichés about Victorian prudery, such as the one that sex was absolutely unmentionable in Victorian households. He comes up with a good many quotes from perfectly non-seedy sources which indicate that not only was sex a popular topic of discussion, but it was considered a good activity to partake in, if only for married couples. Apparently, even at the height of Victorian prudishness sex between married partners was advocated as something healthy and pleasurable, something in which all couples should indulge frequently, and not just to produce offspring, either. There was much concern over the fate of those who never had sex, such as old spinsters. Allegedly, one of the reasons why Victorian girls were so often married off at a young age was because it was believed that suppression of their sex drives would lead to all sorts of physical maladies, neurosis, hysteria, etc. It was also believed (even by some eminent doctors) that semen had a positive effect on women's health, so to rob women of this powerful medicine would be an act of cruelty (or so many doctors said). Apparently, the healing properties of semen were a hotly debated topic in the Victorian era. Who would have thought?

Mason also has some interesting things to say about illegitimacy, birth control, the differences between the classes, male masturbation and the way it was dealt with by both legitimate doctors and quacks, but they are few and far between and hidden so expertly among page upon page of theoretical discourse and arguments which don't really seem to go anywhere that I really can't recommend the book to anyone except die-hard historians, sociologists and anthropologists, or people who are thinking of writing a novel set in the Victorian era and need some historical background. Pity -- an awful lot of research clearly went into the book, and it had the potential to be good.
]]> 3.60 1994 The Making of Victorian Sexual Attitudes
author: Michael Mason
name: Martine
average rating: 3.60
book published: 1994
rating: 2
read at: 2008/04/01
date added: 2014/06/07
shelves: anthropology, british, non-fiction, social-history, disappointing
review:
The Victorian attitude towards sex ought to be a good topic for an interesting book. After all, we all know the clichés and stereotypes, and they're so outrageous that any attempt to confirm or debunk them or put them into a historical context ought to make for an interesting read. Especially if the person tackling the clichés is someone who has obviously spent years doing his research, reading more Victorian documents and examining more census figures than any modern scholar before him (allegedly).

Sadly, Michael Mason, the author of The Making of Victorian Sexuality, is not a good story-teller. Rather than aiming, journalist-style, to inform his reader in a readable and light-hearted way of the truths and untruths of the myths surrounding the Victorian era, he set out to write a scholarly treatise and succeeded rather too well. He spends a long first chapter detailing his research methods, which I'm sure is vital from a scholarly point of view but doesn't make for very exciting reading. He also frequently loses himself in technical details and theoretical debates of a kind which may be of interest to fellow scholars but won't interest many lay readers. And on top of that, he has a maddening tendency to bring up potentially good stories only to refuse to go into detail. For instance, on several occasions he describes at length dull practices which were apparently common in England and closes by stating that 'things were quite different in Scotland'. He then completely fails to explain how things were different in Scotland, which might have made for a better read than the preceding paragraphs. Likewise, he has a habit of mentioning fascinating-sounding titbits about prostitutes, kept women and their men, only to declare primly that they are not the subject of this book and drop the subject altogether -- an act of literary sadism if ever I saw one. And finally, he completely fails to acknowledge homosexuality in the book. I know homosexuality wasn't particularly well documented during the Victorian era, but surely it's worth some mention?

To be fair, there are interesting facts in the book, in between pages of stultifying tedium. I was quite startled to learn, for instance, that comparison of dates of marriage and dates of baptism of first child has shown that around 40 per cent of English brides in the first half of the nineteenth century were pregnant; in some areas the rate pushed up past the half-way point as the century advanced. So much for Victorian girls being chaste, then. These eyebrow-raising numbers are backed up by statements from contemporary foreign visitors who asserted that English girls were much freer than their American and continental European counterparts and that they were generally given ample opportunity to indulge in 'vices' (especially in the upper classes, it would seem). Interestingly enough, the tables were turned after marriage. While nineteenth-century American and continental European women generally gained much freedom upon marriage, English brides allegedly largely lost theirs, being kept on a tight leash after getting married. Apparently, that too was different in Scotland, but as usual, Mason refuses to go into detail, focusing instead on far less interesting material. He does, however, do a creditable job proving that England's harried housewives might have had better sex lives than previously assumed. Think the term 'female orgasm' is a recent coinage? Not true. Apparently, Victorian men were all too aware that women were capable of climaxing, too, and tried hard to make their wives/mistresses come -- not just because this meant they had succeeded in giving pleasure, but also because female orgasms were said to be a prerequisite for conception. The latter belief may have inhibited a few women (I'd think twice about enjoying sex, too, if I believed it might lead to my fifth pregnancy in as many years), but overall it seems that many Victorian wives enjoyed the act of love-making, and that their husbands did their best to satisfy them. So much for 'lie back and think of England', then.

Mason also convincingly debunks a few other clichés about Victorian prudery, such as the one that sex was absolutely unmentionable in Victorian households. He comes up with a good many quotes from perfectly non-seedy sources which indicate that not only was sex a popular topic of discussion, but it was considered a good activity to partake in, if only for married couples. Apparently, even at the height of Victorian prudishness sex between married partners was advocated as something healthy and pleasurable, something in which all couples should indulge frequently, and not just to produce offspring, either. There was much concern over the fate of those who never had sex, such as old spinsters. Allegedly, one of the reasons why Victorian girls were so often married off at a young age was because it was believed that suppression of their sex drives would lead to all sorts of physical maladies, neurosis, hysteria, etc. It was also believed (even by some eminent doctors) that semen had a positive effect on women's health, so to rob women of this powerful medicine would be an act of cruelty (or so many doctors said). Apparently, the healing properties of semen were a hotly debated topic in the Victorian era. Who would have thought?

Mason also has some interesting things to say about illegitimacy, birth control, the differences between the classes, male masturbation and the way it was dealt with by both legitimate doctors and quacks, but they are few and far between and hidden so expertly among page upon page of theoretical discourse and arguments which don't really seem to go anywhere that I really can't recommend the book to anyone except die-hard historians, sociologists and anthropologists, or people who are thinking of writing a novel set in the Victorian era and need some historical background. Pity -- an awful lot of research clearly went into the book, and it had the potential to be good.

]]> <![CDATA[A Wizard of Earthsea (Earthsea Cycle, #1)]]> 979682 here and here

First published in 1968, this classic fantasy is a coming-of-age tale about a boy destined to become the greatest sorcerer in the world. In the 1001 island realm of Earthsea, Ged is a poor blacksmith's son born with an innate understanding of magic. But when he studies at the Roke Island school, he lets his arrogance and antipathy for another student lead him into a disastrous mistake -- unleashing an evil spirit bent on devouring Ged's essence.]]> 203 Ursula K. Le Guin Martine 4
With its distant and detached but nevertheless pleasant tone, A Wizard of Earthsea adroitly sets the tone for the rest of the Earthsea series, which has a more old-fashioned and mythological feel to it than most other fantasy series. It's not a perfect book; the story feels a bit disjointed at times, and it would have been nice if Le Guin had gone into a bit more detail on occasion, rather than staying on the surface. Still, it's an interesting and exciting story, featuring some nifty Taoist ideas on balance (here called 'the equilibrium') and a lot of Le Guin's trademark name magic. A well-deserved four stars -- closer to four and a half stars, actually.]]> 3.88 1968 A Wizard of Earthsea (Earthsea Cycle, #1)
author: Ursula K. Le Guin
name: Martine
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1968
rating: 4
read at: 2005/10/01
date added: 2014/05/18
shelves: fantasy, modern-fiction, north-american
review:
The first book of the Earthsea Cycle starts off much as you'd expect. A young boy, Sparrowhawk, discovers that he has special powers, is sent to a wizards' school where he is hailed as the next big thing, and gets a bit too proud for his own good. So far, so clichéd. What is original is that in his eagerness to show off, Sparrowhawk (now called Ged) unleashes an evil shadow that kills people and haunts him. Can he hide from this shadow, or does he have go on the offensive? He tries both, unsuccessfully at first. And so a long journey ensues in which Ged sees far-flung corners of the world, learns the true nature of things and eventually overcomes his fear of that which he has unleashed, which gets an interesting philosophical twist at the end.

With its distant and detached but nevertheless pleasant tone, A Wizard of Earthsea adroitly sets the tone for the rest of the Earthsea series, which has a more old-fashioned and mythological feel to it than most other fantasy series. It's not a perfect book; the story feels a bit disjointed at times, and it would have been nice if Le Guin had gone into a bit more detail on occasion, rather than staying on the surface. Still, it's an interesting and exciting story, featuring some nifty Taoist ideas on balance (here called 'the equilibrium') and a lot of Le Guin's trademark name magic. A well-deserved four stars -- closer to four and a half stars, actually.
]]> Bartleby 1218370
Bartleby, and The Lightening-rod Man.]]> 56 Herman Melville 0146000129 Martine 0 to-read 3.96 1853 Bartleby
author: Herman Melville
name: Martine
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1853
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/05/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Jude the Obscure 677604 512 Thomas Hardy 0140431314 Martine 3 Jude the Obscure would be an ideal book for secondary school pupils struggling with their book reports. See, the way Hardy wrote the novel, the reader is not required to think for himself about what the characters are like and why they suffer the misfortunes they do. Hardy spells it all out for him, mostly by having the characters analysing themselves and each other ad nauseam. Thus the reader is told that the ambitious stone mason Jude is a 'purblind, simple creature' whose scandalous relationship with his free-spirited cousin Sure is doomed to fail because Sue is an 'ethereal, fine-nerved, sensitive girl, quite unfitted by temperament and instinct to fulfil the conditions of the matrimonial relation ... possibly with scarce any man' (subtle foreshadowing, that) and who, for all her modern ideas, doesn't 'have the courage of [her] views', as she helpfully informs Jude (and the reader) in one of the many dialogues in which her character is discussed at length. Hardy spends so much time spelling out his protagonists' psychological quirks (usually in the form of dialogue) that it borders on the absurd. As a lazy twenty-something reader, I loved this tendency of his (it even struck me as very good characterisation), but when I reread the book last weekend, I wanted to find myself a time machine, head for 1893 and hand Hardy the OED page on which the concept of subtlety is explained, as well as a plaque reminding him to 'Show, Don't Tell', to be put over his writing desk and memorised afresh before each new chapter. Seriously. The characterisation is that overblown.

Hardy's tendency to beat his reader over the head with psychological insights is not the only thing about Jude the Obscure which would make a modern creative writing teacher reach for his red pen. The author also makes the mistake of adding a child to the story who talks and behaves as no other child has ever been known to. His unlikely inclusion and the even more unlikely resolution to his storyline are so preposterously overdramatic and sentimental that they ruin what could have been a very good story despite all its flaws. For make no mistake, there's a good story hidden in there somewhere. There's some genuine tragedy in this tale about a man who keeps making the same mistakes, a woman who is emotionally incapable of love, and a cruel society which will neither allow them to make their dreams come true nor condone any impropriety. As an indictment of Victorian marriage laws and social intolerance, Jude the Obscure is quite effective (it caused an outrage on its initial publication, and understandably so; one can only wonder what the irate Victorian audience would have made of the uncensored draft of the book, which contained even more offensive scenes). As a requiem to dreams, an exploration of happiness versus duty and a lesson not to get side-tracked from one's dreams by false sentiments, it's a powerful read -- or so it would be if it weren't for Hardy's penchant for histrionics and unsubtle characterisation. Pity he didn't have a modern creative writing teacher to teach him the ropes. For all his talent, he really could have done with one here.]]> 3.86 1895 Jude the Obscure
author: Thomas Hardy
name: Martine
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1895
rating: 3
read at: 1996/09/01
date added: 2014/04/29
shelves: british, film, nineteenth-century, psychological-drama
review:
If it weren't for the fact that it's somewhat whiny and depressing (and that's putting it mildly), Jude the Obscure would be an ideal book for secondary school pupils struggling with their book reports. See, the way Hardy wrote the novel, the reader is not required to think for himself about what the characters are like and why they suffer the misfortunes they do. Hardy spells it all out for him, mostly by having the characters analysing themselves and each other ad nauseam. Thus the reader is told that the ambitious stone mason Jude is a 'purblind, simple creature' whose scandalous relationship with his free-spirited cousin Sure is doomed to fail because Sue is an 'ethereal, fine-nerved, sensitive girl, quite unfitted by temperament and instinct to fulfil the conditions of the matrimonial relation ... possibly with scarce any man' (subtle foreshadowing, that) and who, for all her modern ideas, doesn't 'have the courage of [her] views', as she helpfully informs Jude (and the reader) in one of the many dialogues in which her character is discussed at length. Hardy spends so much time spelling out his protagonists' psychological quirks (usually in the form of dialogue) that it borders on the absurd. As a lazy twenty-something reader, I loved this tendency of his (it even struck me as very good characterisation), but when I reread the book last weekend, I wanted to find myself a time machine, head for 1893 and hand Hardy the OED page on which the concept of subtlety is explained, as well as a plaque reminding him to 'Show, Don't Tell', to be put over his writing desk and memorised afresh before each new chapter. Seriously. The characterisation is that overblown.

Hardy's tendency to beat his reader over the head with psychological insights is not the only thing about Jude the Obscure which would make a modern creative writing teacher reach for his red pen. The author also makes the mistake of adding a child to the story who talks and behaves as no other child has ever been known to. His unlikely inclusion and the even more unlikely resolution to his storyline are so preposterously overdramatic and sentimental that they ruin what could have been a very good story despite all its flaws. For make no mistake, there's a good story hidden in there somewhere. There's some genuine tragedy in this tale about a man who keeps making the same mistakes, a woman who is emotionally incapable of love, and a cruel society which will neither allow them to make their dreams come true nor condone any impropriety. As an indictment of Victorian marriage laws and social intolerance, Jude the Obscure is quite effective (it caused an outrage on its initial publication, and understandably so; one can only wonder what the irate Victorian audience would have made of the uncensored draft of the book, which contained even more offensive scenes). As a requiem to dreams, an exploration of happiness versus duty and a lesson not to get side-tracked from one's dreams by false sentiments, it's a powerful read -- or so it would be if it weren't for Hardy's penchant for histrionics and unsubtle characterisation. Pity he didn't have a modern creative writing teacher to teach him the ropes. For all his talent, he really could have done with one here.
]]> I Capture the Castle 965875
Cassandra Mortmain's journal records her fadingly glamorous stepmother, Topaz; her beautiful, wistful older sister, Rose; and the man to whom all three of them owe their isolation and their poverty: Father.

I Capture the Castle has inspired writers as diverse as Armistead Maupin and Joanna Trollope and remains a classic tale of the triumph of youthful naivety over middle-aged cynicism.]]> 342 Dodie Smith 1860491022 Martine 5
]]> 4.07 1948 I Capture the Castle
author: Dodie Smith
name: Martine
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1948
rating: 5
read at: 2006/04/01
date added: 2014/01/13
shelves: british, family-drama, favourites, film, intelligent-chick-lit, modern-fiction, romance
review:
This is going to be the shortest review I've written on this site in a while. The reason I'm going to keep it short is because no description could possibly do justice to this quintessentially English coming-of-age story which ranks among the most pleasant surprises I've had, book-wise. A summary would make it sound slight, trite and predictable, all of which it is, and would not reflect the fact that it's also funny as hell, charismatic, deliciously eccentric, Austenesque and so utterly charming that I quite literally had sore cheeks after reading it because I couldn't stop smiling at the delightful nonsense the incomparable Cassandra Mortmain spilled out on the pages. I'm not exaggerating here -- this book will charm the pants off you, especially if you happen to have two X chromosomes and a bad case of Anglophilia. It's what would happen if an early-twentieth-century Jane Austen were to grow up in a dilapidated castle and get into financial trouble, and that's all I'm going say about it, except that I want to be Cassandra Mortmain when I grow down. Only I think I'll write my book on a computer rather than sitting in the kitchen sink, because it would be so much more comfortable, thank you very much.


]]> Slaughterhouse-Five 4981 Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world’s great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous World War II firebombing of Dresden, the novel is the result of what Kurt Vonnegut described as a twenty-three-year struggle to write a book about what he had witnessed as an American prisoner of war. It combines historical fiction, science fiction, autobiography, and satire in an account of the life of Billy Pilgrim, a barber’s son turned draftee turned optometrist turned alien abductee. As Vonnegut had, Billy experiences the destruction of Dresden as a POW. Unlike Vonnegut, he experiences time travel, or coming “unstuck in time.�

An instant bestseller, Slaughterhouse-Five made Kurt Vonnegut a cult hero in American literature, a reputation that only strengthened over time, despite his being banned and censored by some libraries and schools for content and language. But it was precisely those elements of Vonnegut’s writing—the political edginess, the genre-bending inventiveness, the frank violence, the transgressive wit—that have inspired generations of readers not just to look differently at the world around them but to find the confidence to say something about it.

Fifty years after its initial publication at the height of the Vietnam War, Vonnegut's portrayal of political disillusionment, PTSD, and postwar anxiety feels as relevant, darkly humorous, and profoundly affecting as ever, an enduring beacon through our own era’s uncertainties.]]> 275 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Martine 3 Slaughterhouse-5 has received over the years. Sure, the story is interesting. It has a fascinating and mostly successful blend of tragedy and comic relief. And yes, I guess the fractured structure and time-travelling element must have been quite novel and original back in the day. But that doesn't excuse the book's flaws, of which there are a great many in my (seemingly unconventional) opinion. Take, for instance, Vonnegut's endless repetition of the phrase 'So it goes.' Wikipedia informs me it crops up 106 times in the book. It felt like three hundred times to me. About forty pages into the book, I was so fed up with the words 'So it goes' that I felt like hurling the book across the room, something I have not done since trying to read up on French semiotics back in the 1990s. I got used to coming across the words every two pages or so eventually, but I never grew to like them. God, no.

I found some other nits to pick, too. Some of them were small and trivial and frankly rather ridiculous, such as -- wait for it -- the hyphen in the book's title. Seriously, what is that hyphen doing there? There's no need for a hyphen there. Couldn't someone have removed it, like, 437 editions ago? And while I'm at it, couldn't some discerning editor have done something about the monotonous quality of Vonnegut's prose -- about the interminable repetition of short subject-verb-object sentences? Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying all authors should use Henry James- or Claire Messud-length sentences. Heaven forbid. I'm actually rather fond of minimalism, both in visual art and in writing. But Vonnegut's prose is so sparse and simplistic it's monotonous rather than minimalist, to the point where I frequently found myself wishing for a run-on sentence every now and then, or for an actual in-depth description of something. I hardly ever got either. As a result, there were times when I felt like I was reading a bare-bones outline of a story rather than the story itself. Granted, it was an interesting outline, larded with pleasing ideas and observations, but still, I think the story could have been told in a more effective way. A less annoying way, too.

As for the plot, I liked it. I liked the little vignettes Vonnegut came up with and the colourful characters he created (the British officers being my particular favourites). I liked the fact that you're never quite sure whether Billy is suffering from dementia, brain damage or some kind of delayed post-traumatic stress disorder, or whether there is some actual time-travelling going on. I even liked the jarring switches in perspective, although I think they could have been handled in a slightly more subtle manner. And I liked the book's anti-war message, weak and defeatist though it seemed to be. In short, I liked the book, but it took some doing. I hope I'll be less annoyed by the two other Vonnegut books I have sitting on my shelves, Breakfast of Champions and Cat's Cradle.
]]> 4.10 1969 Slaughterhouse-Five
author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: Martine
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1969
rating: 3
read at: 2008/03/01
date added: 2014/01/11
shelves: historical-fiction, modern-fiction, north-american, postmodern, science-fiction
review:
I have to admit to being somewhat baffled by the acclaim Slaughterhouse-5 has received over the years. Sure, the story is interesting. It has a fascinating and mostly successful blend of tragedy and comic relief. And yes, I guess the fractured structure and time-travelling element must have been quite novel and original back in the day. But that doesn't excuse the book's flaws, of which there are a great many in my (seemingly unconventional) opinion. Take, for instance, Vonnegut's endless repetition of the phrase 'So it goes.' Wikipedia informs me it crops up 106 times in the book. It felt like three hundred times to me. About forty pages into the book, I was so fed up with the words 'So it goes' that I felt like hurling the book across the room, something I have not done since trying to read up on French semiotics back in the 1990s. I got used to coming across the words every two pages or so eventually, but I never grew to like them. God, no.

I found some other nits to pick, too. Some of them were small and trivial and frankly rather ridiculous, such as -- wait for it -- the hyphen in the book's title. Seriously, what is that hyphen doing there? There's no need for a hyphen there. Couldn't someone have removed it, like, 437 editions ago? And while I'm at it, couldn't some discerning editor have done something about the monotonous quality of Vonnegut's prose -- about the interminable repetition of short subject-verb-object sentences? Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying all authors should use Henry James- or Claire Messud-length sentences. Heaven forbid. I'm actually rather fond of minimalism, both in visual art and in writing. But Vonnegut's prose is so sparse and simplistic it's monotonous rather than minimalist, to the point where I frequently found myself wishing for a run-on sentence every now and then, or for an actual in-depth description of something. I hardly ever got either. As a result, there were times when I felt like I was reading a bare-bones outline of a story rather than the story itself. Granted, it was an interesting outline, larded with pleasing ideas and observations, but still, I think the story could have been told in a more effective way. A less annoying way, too.

As for the plot, I liked it. I liked the little vignettes Vonnegut came up with and the colourful characters he created (the British officers being my particular favourites). I liked the fact that you're never quite sure whether Billy is suffering from dementia, brain damage or some kind of delayed post-traumatic stress disorder, or whether there is some actual time-travelling going on. I even liked the jarring switches in perspective, although I think they could have been handled in a slightly more subtle manner. And I liked the book's anti-war message, weak and defeatist though it seemed to be. In short, I liked the book, but it took some doing. I hope I'll be less annoyed by the two other Vonnegut books I have sitting on my shelves, Breakfast of Champions and Cat's Cradle.

]]> <![CDATA[Tales from Ovid: 24 Passages from the Metamorphoses]]> 133951 A powerful version of the Latin classic by England's late Poet Laureate, now in paperback.When it was published in 1997, Tales from Ovid was immediately recognized as a classic in its own right, as the best rendering of Ovid in generations, and as a major book in Ted Hughes's oeuvre. The Metamorphoses of Ovid stands with the works of Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Milton as a classic of world poetry; Hughes translated twenty-four of its stories with great power and directness. The result is the liveliest twentieth-century version of the classic, at once a delight for the Latinist and an appealing introduction to Ovid for the general reader.
]]> 257 Ted Hughes 0374525870 Martine 0 to-read 4.24 1997 Tales from Ovid: 24 Passages from the Metamorphoses
author: Ted Hughes
name: Martine
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1997
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/01/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Crimson Petal and the White]]> 40200 922 Michel Faber 1841954314 Martine 5 The Crimson Petal and the White, it would be 'WOW'. (With capitals. Yes.) At 895 pages, it's a big book, and it's not without its flaws, but such is the quality of the writing, the characterisation and the staggering amount of research that went into it that I was enthralled from beginning to end and stayed up until 4am on a weekday night to be able to read the last four hundred pages. I don't regret the sleep I lost that night; if anything, I regret that there weren't four hundred more pages to stay up for. That's how much I liked the book.

So what's it all about? Well, it's hard to sum up an 895-page story in a few lines, but basically it's about an intelligent prostitute who lives in 1870s London, wheedles her way into a rich man's life and ends up changing several lives, not least her own. She's an appealing (albeit emotionally scarred and manipulative) heroine, and she's portrayed in admirable detail. So are all the other characters, who make up one of the finest casts since the heyday of Dickens. Randy gentlemen, cross-dressing prostitutes, society-obsessed ladies with brain tumours, would-be parsons tormented by sexual fantasies, love-starved children who grow up in the servants' quarters because their mothers can't be reminded of their existence, guards who spend all the days of their lives reciting news of deathly disasters, well-bred ladies who risk expulsion from polite society to help fallen women... they're all here, and they're drawn in shockingly intimate detail. All their thoughts, dreams and fantasies are spilled out on the pages, and for the most part they're riveting. Similar candour is employed in the descriptions of actions and places. Not content with simply providing lush descriptions of Victorian splendours (although he certainly does that, too), Michel Faber gives his book a distinctly modern feel by describing things no Victorian novelist in his right mind would ever have mentioned, such as, well, sex. The Crimson Petal and the White is full of highly inelegant sex scenes, liberally sprinkled with four-letter words. In addition, it features painstakingly detailed descriptions of unmentionable things like the heroine's skin disease, the sounds, sights and smells of London's red-light district, the vaginal douches with which prostitutes tried to prevent pregnancy, the look and smell of used chamber pots, a farting concert, and so on. This may sound off-putting, but the descriptions are so vivid and so, well, interesting that they greatly add to the authenticity and local colour of the book, presenting a truly kaleidoscopic view of London in the 1870s. The result is a rich and fascinating story which is at turns utterly Victorian and thoroughly modern, dirty and elegant, highbrow and lowbrow, disgusting and engrossing. It certainly isn't for the faint of heart, but in its own daring way, it's spectacular. I would even go so far as to call it mesmerising.

As for its shortcomings, well, I guess you could say the book is a bit jarring at times. Faber has an interesting tendency to introduce characters, devote many words to them, and then suddenly and quite randomly to kill them off or otherwise lose sight of them, thus making you wonder what their point was in the first place. In a way, the sudden deaths/disappearances are as realistic as the descriptions of the chamber pots and vaginal douches (after all, death does creep up on us very suddenly, and people do really vanish from our lives like that, don't they?), but it's an uncommon device in literature, and it's a bit jarring at times, especially since it's so thoroughly un-Victorian. Aren't storylines usually tied up neatly in Victorian novels?

Which brings me to the ending. Much has been written about the ending of The Crimson Petal and the White, which is as jarring and un-Victorian as they come. There is no 'Reader, I married him' here, much less a summary of what happened to the main characters after the final curtain. Instead, the story comes to an abrupt halt, leaving the main characters in medias res. Like many readers, I was initially put off by the ending, thinking that the narrator's sudden 'But now it's time to let me go' was a paltry reward for staying with him for nearly nine hundred pages. However, the more I thought about it, the more I liked the ending. After all, what could be more fitting in a book which is largely about fantasies than to leave the reader on a note which has him fantasising about what might have happened to the characters, weighing the pros and cons of each scenario? I definitely agree that Faber should have ended the story on a less abrupt note, but I've forgiven him for the openness of the ending. It works for me, even if many other people hate it.

As for conjectures about the ending... My guess is that Sugar and Sophie end up building a new life for themselves in Australia. What do you think, those of you who have read the book? ]]> 3.88 2002 The Crimson Petal and the White
author: Michel Faber
name: Martine
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2002
rating: 5
read at: 2008/06/01
date added: 2014/01/07
shelves: british, favourites, family-drama, historical-fiction, modern-fiction, pseudo-nineteenth-century, psychological-drama
review:
If I had to give a one-word response to the big, sprawling monster of a faux-Victorian novel that is The Crimson Petal and the White, it would be 'WOW'. (With capitals. Yes.) At 895 pages, it's a big book, and it's not without its flaws, but such is the quality of the writing, the characterisation and the staggering amount of research that went into it that I was enthralled from beginning to end and stayed up until 4am on a weekday night to be able to read the last four hundred pages. I don't regret the sleep I lost that night; if anything, I regret that there weren't four hundred more pages to stay up for. That's how much I liked the book.

So what's it all about? Well, it's hard to sum up an 895-page story in a few lines, but basically it's about an intelligent prostitute who lives in 1870s London, wheedles her way into a rich man's life and ends up changing several lives, not least her own. She's an appealing (albeit emotionally scarred and manipulative) heroine, and she's portrayed in admirable detail. So are all the other characters, who make up one of the finest casts since the heyday of Dickens. Randy gentlemen, cross-dressing prostitutes, society-obsessed ladies with brain tumours, would-be parsons tormented by sexual fantasies, love-starved children who grow up in the servants' quarters because their mothers can't be reminded of their existence, guards who spend all the days of their lives reciting news of deathly disasters, well-bred ladies who risk expulsion from polite society to help fallen women... they're all here, and they're drawn in shockingly intimate detail. All their thoughts, dreams and fantasies are spilled out on the pages, and for the most part they're riveting. Similar candour is employed in the descriptions of actions and places. Not content with simply providing lush descriptions of Victorian splendours (although he certainly does that, too), Michel Faber gives his book a distinctly modern feel by describing things no Victorian novelist in his right mind would ever have mentioned, such as, well, sex. The Crimson Petal and the White is full of highly inelegant sex scenes, liberally sprinkled with four-letter words. In addition, it features painstakingly detailed descriptions of unmentionable things like the heroine's skin disease, the sounds, sights and smells of London's red-light district, the vaginal douches with which prostitutes tried to prevent pregnancy, the look and smell of used chamber pots, a farting concert, and so on. This may sound off-putting, but the descriptions are so vivid and so, well, interesting that they greatly add to the authenticity and local colour of the book, presenting a truly kaleidoscopic view of London in the 1870s. The result is a rich and fascinating story which is at turns utterly Victorian and thoroughly modern, dirty and elegant, highbrow and lowbrow, disgusting and engrossing. It certainly isn't for the faint of heart, but in its own daring way, it's spectacular. I would even go so far as to call it mesmerising.

As for its shortcomings, well, I guess you could say the book is a bit jarring at times. Faber has an interesting tendency to introduce characters, devote many words to them, and then suddenly and quite randomly to kill them off or otherwise lose sight of them, thus making you wonder what their point was in the first place. In a way, the sudden deaths/disappearances are as realistic as the descriptions of the chamber pots and vaginal douches (after all, death does creep up on us very suddenly, and people do really vanish from our lives like that, don't they?), but it's an uncommon device in literature, and it's a bit jarring at times, especially since it's so thoroughly un-Victorian. Aren't storylines usually tied up neatly in Victorian novels?

Which brings me to the ending. Much has been written about the ending of The Crimson Petal and the White, which is as jarring and un-Victorian as they come. There is no 'Reader, I married him' here, much less a summary of what happened to the main characters after the final curtain. Instead, the story comes to an abrupt halt, leaving the main characters in medias res. Like many readers, I was initially put off by the ending, thinking that the narrator's sudden 'But now it's time to let me go' was a paltry reward for staying with him for nearly nine hundred pages. However, the more I thought about it, the more I liked the ending. After all, what could be more fitting in a book which is largely about fantasies than to leave the reader on a note which has him fantasising about what might have happened to the characters, weighing the pros and cons of each scenario? I definitely agree that Faber should have ended the story on a less abrupt note, but I've forgiven him for the openness of the ending. It works for me, even if many other people hate it.

As for conjectures about the ending... My guess is that Sugar and Sophie end up building a new life for themselves in Australia. What do you think, those of you who have read the book?
]]> Beauty 89587
She is taken to the world of the future, a savage society where, even amongst the teeming billions, she is utterly alone. And as she travels magically to places both imaginary and real, Beauty eventually comes to understand her special place in humanity's destiny.]]> 476 Sheri S. Tepper 1857987225 Martine 4 Beauty I wasn't sure whether I was really going to like the book, as it kept moving from subject to subject without staying long enough with each one to make it work. About 200 pages in, I was convinced the author had far too many ideas for her own good, and no idea of how to weave them together into a cohesive story. Despite my misgivings, though, I stuck with the book, and I'm glad I did, because the second half more than made up for the flaws of the first. I ended up enjoying the hell out of Beauty, so much so that I considered giving it five stars. Not bad for a book which initially struck me as trying too hard and failing.

So what is Beauty about? It's hard to summarise the story as it is so terribly convoluted, but in a nutshell, it's about a fourteenth-century princess (half human, half fairy) named Beauty who escapes a terrible, fairy-tale-like fate and magically ends up in the twenty-first century, which is a distinctly unpleasant place bereft of all beauty. From this dystopian future she makes her way back to a very recognisable twentieth century which clearly carries the germs of the wave of destruction which is about to follow, and from there the story weaves in and out of different ages and worlds (reality, Faerie, even Hell) where Beauty gets to deal with love, rape and rejection, among many other things. She also discovers that she carries something important within her, something essential to the survival of Things Which Matter. And so the reader is taken on a rollercoaster ride through time and space, which is further enlivened by the many well-known fairy-tale characters Beauty meets on her way. I don't want to give away too much here, but Beauty somehow ends up giving birth to Cinderella and also counts Sleeping Beauty and the Frog Prince among her descendants. These well-known characters are among the most inspired elements of the book, mainly because they are so different from the way they are portrayed elsewhere. Take Cinderella, for instance. In Tepper's vision, she is not the sweet and innocent girl of Perrault's tale, but rather an outrageous slut who must have her prince because she can't wait to shag his brains out. For her part, Sleeping Beauty, while insanely beautiful, is also insanely stupid, and as for the seven dwarfs who guard her while she is asleep, well, let's just say they are not as innocent as Disney made them out to be. I had a ball with Tepper's take on these classic characters, frequently laughing out loud at the way she perverted old tales and wove them into her own story. There is some very clever pastiche going on here, and to me, it just about made the book.

What lets Beauty down somewhat is the didacticism of its tone. Tepper is a fine writer, but she is not very subtle; she makes her points very heavy-handedly, sometimes cringe-inducingly so. In Beauty, she tackles the loss of nature, beauty and magic in an increasingly less romantic world. As a fellow romantic with a yearning for the sublime, I found myself in sympathy with Tepper's message, but I do wish she hadn't forced it down my throat the way she did. I also somewhat objected to the overt feminism of the book, which mainly manifested itself in some truly despicable male characters. Apart from the heavy-handed environmentalism and feminism, though, Beauty is a fine book with some good, honest writing and some truly inspired ideas, mostly in the second half. If you can get over the disjointedness of the first half and the author's tendency to introduce cool ideas without really working them out, you'll find an imaginative and frequently entertaining (albeit depressing) fantasy story with some familiar, refreshingly un-Disney-like characters. It's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it's better than most fantasy books out there, and I have no trouble recommending it to those who like their fairy tales dark and bleak.
]]> 3.75 1991 Beauty
author: Sheri S. Tepper
name: Martine
average rating: 3.75
book published: 1991
rating: 4
read at: 2009/07/01
date added: 2014/01/07
shelves: fairy-tales, fantasy, modern-fiction, north-american
review:
About 100 pages into Beauty I wasn't sure whether I was really going to like the book, as it kept moving from subject to subject without staying long enough with each one to make it work. About 200 pages in, I was convinced the author had far too many ideas for her own good, and no idea of how to weave them together into a cohesive story. Despite my misgivings, though, I stuck with the book, and I'm glad I did, because the second half more than made up for the flaws of the first. I ended up enjoying the hell out of Beauty, so much so that I considered giving it five stars. Not bad for a book which initially struck me as trying too hard and failing.

So what is Beauty about? It's hard to summarise the story as it is so terribly convoluted, but in a nutshell, it's about a fourteenth-century princess (half human, half fairy) named Beauty who escapes a terrible, fairy-tale-like fate and magically ends up in the twenty-first century, which is a distinctly unpleasant place bereft of all beauty. From this dystopian future she makes her way back to a very recognisable twentieth century which clearly carries the germs of the wave of destruction which is about to follow, and from there the story weaves in and out of different ages and worlds (reality, Faerie, even Hell) where Beauty gets to deal with love, rape and rejection, among many other things. She also discovers that she carries something important within her, something essential to the survival of Things Which Matter. And so the reader is taken on a rollercoaster ride through time and space, which is further enlivened by the many well-known fairy-tale characters Beauty meets on her way. I don't want to give away too much here, but Beauty somehow ends up giving birth to Cinderella and also counts Sleeping Beauty and the Frog Prince among her descendants. These well-known characters are among the most inspired elements of the book, mainly because they are so different from the way they are portrayed elsewhere. Take Cinderella, for instance. In Tepper's vision, she is not the sweet and innocent girl of Perrault's tale, but rather an outrageous slut who must have her prince because she can't wait to shag his brains out. For her part, Sleeping Beauty, while insanely beautiful, is also insanely stupid, and as for the seven dwarfs who guard her while she is asleep, well, let's just say they are not as innocent as Disney made them out to be. I had a ball with Tepper's take on these classic characters, frequently laughing out loud at the way she perverted old tales and wove them into her own story. There is some very clever pastiche going on here, and to me, it just about made the book.

What lets Beauty down somewhat is the didacticism of its tone. Tepper is a fine writer, but she is not very subtle; she makes her points very heavy-handedly, sometimes cringe-inducingly so. In Beauty, she tackles the loss of nature, beauty and magic in an increasingly less romantic world. As a fellow romantic with a yearning for the sublime, I found myself in sympathy with Tepper's message, but I do wish she hadn't forced it down my throat the way she did. I also somewhat objected to the overt feminism of the book, which mainly manifested itself in some truly despicable male characters. Apart from the heavy-handed environmentalism and feminism, though, Beauty is a fine book with some good, honest writing and some truly inspired ideas, mostly in the second half. If you can get over the disjointedness of the first half and the author's tendency to introduce cool ideas without really working them out, you'll find an imaginative and frequently entertaining (albeit depressing) fantasy story with some familiar, refreshingly un-Disney-like characters. It's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it's better than most fantasy books out there, and I have no trouble recommending it to those who like their fairy tales dark and bleak.

]]> Madame Bovary 2175 329 Gustave Flaubert 0192840398 Martine 4 Madame Bovary when I was seventeen or so. I chose not to, and boy, am I glad I did. I couldn't possibly have done justice to the richness of Flaubert's writing as a seventeen-year-old. Moreover, I probably would have hated the characters so much that I never would have given the book another chance. Which would have been a shame, as it's really quite deserving of the tremendous reputation it has.

Madame Bovary is the story of Emma Rouault, a mid-nineteenth-century peasant woman who has read too many sentimental novels for her own good. When the hopeless romantic marries Charles Bovary, a country doctor, she thinks she is going to lead a life full of passion and grandeur, but instead she gets stuck in a provincial town where nothing ever happens. Hell-bent on some escapism and yearning for someone who understands her romantic needs, Emma embarks on two adulterous affairs, plunges herself into debt and ends up very badly indeed, leaving behind a husband who might not have been the dashing hero of her dreams but who most certainly did care about her.

Madame Bovary is most famous for its portrayal of an unfulfilled woman, and indeed it's Emma's ennui and desperate need for romance that the reader will remember. They are described so convincingly that it's hard to believe the author was a man rather than a woman. However, Madame Bovary isn't all about one woman going through life dreaming and breaking down every time reality catches up with her. Like other great classics of realism, it's about society � about the social mores and conditions which instil certain kinds of behaviour in people and then punish them for it. Flaubert's depiction of Emma's provincial village (a haven of all that is base and mediocre) is painstakingly detailed and realistic. It's a wonderfully vivid and well-observed account of life in mid-nineteenth-century rural France, where people go about doing their jobs, conducting illicit affairs, gossiping behind each other's backs, ruining each other financially and generally leading lives which are far from exalted. Flaubert's portrayal of his characters is unabashedly vicious and misanthropic, but such is the quality of his writing that you forgive him for taking such a dim view of humanity. There are descriptions in the book (the seduction at the market, the club-foot operation, the endlessly prolonged death from arsenic poisoning) which rank among the best things nineteenth-century realism has to offer � gloriously life-like scenes which make you feel as if you're right there in the thick of things, watching things happen in front of your horrified eyes. And if the whole thing has a tragic and deterministic slant to it, well, so be it. That's realism for you. At least Flaubert has the decency to grant his heroine a few sighs of rapture before her inexorable demise. For it may be a realist novel, but it has some genuinely romantic moments of passion and drama (cab ride through Rouen, anyone?), and is all the better for it.

Ultimately, how you respond to Madame Bovary depends on your own susceptibility to romantic notions. If, like Emma Bovary, you're prone to dreams of passion, beauty and perfection, and yearn to feel and experience rather than being stuck in a dreary life in a village where nothing ever happens, chances are you'll be able to relate to Emma and thus see the genius of Flaubert's depiction of her. If, on the other hand, you think that such romantic escapism is a lot of sentimental, self-indulgent claptrap (which it is � that's the tragedy of it!), you probably won't be able to relate to Emma at all, and therefore won't much appreciate her as a tragic heroine. As for myself, I'm definitely in the former camp. If I'd been Emma, I probably would have walked into the same traps that she does. I would have fallen in love with the one neighbour who seems to understand my need for intensity, I would have gone through the same mad cycle of repentance, dissatisfaction and making the same mistakes again, and I probably would have spent a bit too much money in my quest for soul-affirming experiences, as well. My ruin wouldn't have been as complete as Emma's, but it would have been fed by the same dreams and desires. Oh, yes. So don't let anyone tell you Madame Bovary is an old-fashioned creature whose dilemmas are no longer relevant to modern readers. There are plenty of people in modern society who are as much in love with romance itself as she is, and not just women, either. And as for discontent, how many people today aren't dissatisfied with their lives because they don't match the glamorous/exciting lives they see on TV? And how many people today don't rack up huge debts because the magazines they read have led them to believe that they're entitled to more than is within their means? Replace 'sentimental novels' by 'TV', 'movies' and 'magazines', and all of a sudden Emma's cravings won't seem so outdated any more. Quite the contrary; they're as timeless and universal as they ever were. That's the hallmark of a classic � it speaks to us from across a century and a half and shows us ourselves. We may not much like the picture of ourselves, but it's pretty powerful all the same.

I'd give the book four and a half stars if I could, but alas. In the absence of half stars, four stars will have to do, with the assurance that it's well worth another half.
]]> 3.70 1856 Madame Bovary
author: Gustave Flaubert
name: Martine
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1856
rating: 4
read at: 2002/10/01
date added: 2014/01/06
shelves: continental-european, film, nineteenth-century, psychological-drama
review:
Like every European teenager who takes French at secondary school, I was supposed to read Madame Bovary when I was seventeen or so. I chose not to, and boy, am I glad I did. I couldn't possibly have done justice to the richness of Flaubert's writing as a seventeen-year-old. Moreover, I probably would have hated the characters so much that I never would have given the book another chance. Which would have been a shame, as it's really quite deserving of the tremendous reputation it has.

Madame Bovary is the story of Emma Rouault, a mid-nineteenth-century peasant woman who has read too many sentimental novels for her own good. When the hopeless romantic marries Charles Bovary, a country doctor, she thinks she is going to lead a life full of passion and grandeur, but instead she gets stuck in a provincial town where nothing ever happens. Hell-bent on some escapism and yearning for someone who understands her romantic needs, Emma embarks on two adulterous affairs, plunges herself into debt and ends up very badly indeed, leaving behind a husband who might not have been the dashing hero of her dreams but who most certainly did care about her.

Madame Bovary is most famous for its portrayal of an unfulfilled woman, and indeed it's Emma's ennui and desperate need for romance that the reader will remember. They are described so convincingly that it's hard to believe the author was a man rather than a woman. However, Madame Bovary isn't all about one woman going through life dreaming and breaking down every time reality catches up with her. Like other great classics of realism, it's about society � about the social mores and conditions which instil certain kinds of behaviour in people and then punish them for it. Flaubert's depiction of Emma's provincial village (a haven of all that is base and mediocre) is painstakingly detailed and realistic. It's a wonderfully vivid and well-observed account of life in mid-nineteenth-century rural France, where people go about doing their jobs, conducting illicit affairs, gossiping behind each other's backs, ruining each other financially and generally leading lives which are far from exalted. Flaubert's portrayal of his characters is unabashedly vicious and misanthropic, but such is the quality of his writing that you forgive him for taking such a dim view of humanity. There are descriptions in the book (the seduction at the market, the club-foot operation, the endlessly prolonged death from arsenic poisoning) which rank among the best things nineteenth-century realism has to offer � gloriously life-like scenes which make you feel as if you're right there in the thick of things, watching things happen in front of your horrified eyes. And if the whole thing has a tragic and deterministic slant to it, well, so be it. That's realism for you. At least Flaubert has the decency to grant his heroine a few sighs of rapture before her inexorable demise. For it may be a realist novel, but it has some genuinely romantic moments of passion and drama (cab ride through Rouen, anyone?), and is all the better for it.

Ultimately, how you respond to Madame Bovary depends on your own susceptibility to romantic notions. If, like Emma Bovary, you're prone to dreams of passion, beauty and perfection, and yearn to feel and experience rather than being stuck in a dreary life in a village where nothing ever happens, chances are you'll be able to relate to Emma and thus see the genius of Flaubert's depiction of her. If, on the other hand, you think that such romantic escapism is a lot of sentimental, self-indulgent claptrap (which it is � that's the tragedy of it!), you probably won't be able to relate to Emma at all, and therefore won't much appreciate her as a tragic heroine. As for myself, I'm definitely in the former camp. If I'd been Emma, I probably would have walked into the same traps that she does. I would have fallen in love with the one neighbour who seems to understand my need for intensity, I would have gone through the same mad cycle of repentance, dissatisfaction and making the same mistakes again, and I probably would have spent a bit too much money in my quest for soul-affirming experiences, as well. My ruin wouldn't have been as complete as Emma's, but it would have been fed by the same dreams and desires. Oh, yes. So don't let anyone tell you Madame Bovary is an old-fashioned creature whose dilemmas are no longer relevant to modern readers. There are plenty of people in modern society who are as much in love with romance itself as she is, and not just women, either. And as for discontent, how many people today aren't dissatisfied with their lives because they don't match the glamorous/exciting lives they see on TV? And how many people today don't rack up huge debts because the magazines they read have led them to believe that they're entitled to more than is within their means? Replace 'sentimental novels' by 'TV', 'movies' and 'magazines', and all of a sudden Emma's cravings won't seem so outdated any more. Quite the contrary; they're as timeless and universal as they ever were. That's the hallmark of a classic � it speaks to us from across a century and a half and shows us ourselves. We may not much like the picture of ourselves, but it's pretty powerful all the same.

I'd give the book four and a half stars if I could, but alas. In the absence of half stars, four stars will have to do, with the assurance that it's well worth another half.

]]> Middlesex 2187 Middlesex tells the breathtaking story of Calliope Stephanides, and three generations of the Greek-American Stephanides family, who travel from a tiny village overlooking Mount Olympus in Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit, witnessing its glory days as the Motor City and the race riots of 1967 before moving out to the tree-lined streets of suburban Grosse Pointe, Michigan. To understand why Calliope is not like other girls, she has to uncover a guilty family secret, and the astonishing genetic history that turns Callie into Cal, one of the most audacious and wondrous narrators in contemporary fiction. Lyrical and thrilling, Middlesex is an exhilarating reinvention of the American epic.]]> 529 Jeffrey Eugenides 0312422156 Martine 3 Iliad'. On the other hand, I had serious problems with some of the writing. I haven't seen my quibbles mentioned anywhere else, so I guess I'm alone on them. Or am I?

In a nutshell, Middlesex is the story of Cal, a Greek American who was born a hermaphrodite and raised as a girl before finally realising he was boy as a teenager. In about five hundred occasionally brilliant pages, Cal traces back his family history (which is rife with inbreeding) to see how he came to be the sort of almost-male he is. In so doing, he not only paints a loving picture of the memorable and colourful Stephanides clan, whose men have rather special ways of wooing women, but of a changing world, all the way from the Greek part of early-twentieth-century Turkey through mid-twentieth-century Detroit to post-Wall Berlin. What with its focus on different conflicts in different eras, the book is quite epic in scope. Yet it is also quite personal, with the social and racial conflicts played out in the world at large reflecting the much more private conflict that is going on within Cal. Both the epic and the intimate aspects of the novel are funny, poignant and tragic, and for that Jeffrey Eugenides deserves applause. Lots of it.

But. But. But.

I have to admit to finding Eugenides an awfully inconsistent writer. While he undeniably has a flair for story-telling, he also has a mad tendency to change tenses and perspectives, to the point where it actually quite took me out of the story. I dislike stories which switch back and forth between past tense and present tense within a matter of paragraphs at the best of times; if these stories also come equipped with narrators who constantly switch points of view, I get annoyed. And this is exactly what happens in Middlesex. Not only is Cal an omniscient first-person narrator who shares with the reader details from older relatives' lives which he has no way of knowing, but he also has a maddening tendency to randomly refer to himself in the third person, which results in sudden bursts of 'Calliope this' and 'Calliope that' in what is essentially a first-person narrative. To a certain extent, I can see why Cal would do this, looking back from a distance at a person he used to be but no longer is, but still, I found it annoying, so much so that I occasionally found myself wanting to scream at the narrator to drop all that third-person shit and stick with the first person, for God's sake. I don't like feeling like shouting at narrators, so that's where one star went. The other one I deducted for the weak ending, which felt rather rushed to me after the perfectly lavish set-up. Is it me, or would Middlesex have been a better book with slightly more information on what happened to Cal between the ages of 17 and 41? With an actual, you know, ending and all that?

I'll stop complaining here to end on a positive note. Despite my quibbles, I enjoyed most of Middlesex -- especially the first half, which is superb. I quite like Eugenides' brand of modern mythology, so I think I'll give The Virgin Suicides a shot, too. I rather liked the film, so I'm actually quite surprised I haven't read the book yet...
]]> 4.03 2002 Middlesex
author: Jeffrey Eugenides
name: Martine
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2002
rating: 3
read at: 2008/02/01
date added: 2014/01/04
shelves: modern-fiction, north-american, family-drama, glbt, psychological-drama
review:
I'm torn on this book. On the one hand, I loved the story, which is, as another reviewer put it, 'the greatest, most incestuous Greek epic since the Iliad'. On the other hand, I had serious problems with some of the writing. I haven't seen my quibbles mentioned anywhere else, so I guess I'm alone on them. Or am I?

In a nutshell, Middlesex is the story of Cal, a Greek American who was born a hermaphrodite and raised as a girl before finally realising he was boy as a teenager. In about five hundred occasionally brilliant pages, Cal traces back his family history (which is rife with inbreeding) to see how he came to be the sort of almost-male he is. In so doing, he not only paints a loving picture of the memorable and colourful Stephanides clan, whose men have rather special ways of wooing women, but of a changing world, all the way from the Greek part of early-twentieth-century Turkey through mid-twentieth-century Detroit to post-Wall Berlin. What with its focus on different conflicts in different eras, the book is quite epic in scope. Yet it is also quite personal, with the social and racial conflicts played out in the world at large reflecting the much more private conflict that is going on within Cal. Both the epic and the intimate aspects of the novel are funny, poignant and tragic, and for that Jeffrey Eugenides deserves applause. Lots of it.

But. But. But.

I have to admit to finding Eugenides an awfully inconsistent writer. While he undeniably has a flair for story-telling, he also has a mad tendency to change tenses and perspectives, to the point where it actually quite took me out of the story. I dislike stories which switch back and forth between past tense and present tense within a matter of paragraphs at the best of times; if these stories also come equipped with narrators who constantly switch points of view, I get annoyed. And this is exactly what happens in Middlesex. Not only is Cal an omniscient first-person narrator who shares with the reader details from older relatives' lives which he has no way of knowing, but he also has a maddening tendency to randomly refer to himself in the third person, which results in sudden bursts of 'Calliope this' and 'Calliope that' in what is essentially a first-person narrative. To a certain extent, I can see why Cal would do this, looking back from a distance at a person he used to be but no longer is, but still, I found it annoying, so much so that I occasionally found myself wanting to scream at the narrator to drop all that third-person shit and stick with the first person, for God's sake. I don't like feeling like shouting at narrators, so that's where one star went. The other one I deducted for the weak ending, which felt rather rushed to me after the perfectly lavish set-up. Is it me, or would Middlesex have been a better book with slightly more information on what happened to Cal between the ages of 17 and 41? With an actual, you know, ending and all that?

I'll stop complaining here to end on a positive note. Despite my quibbles, I enjoyed most of Middlesex -- especially the first half, which is superb. I quite like Eugenides' brand of modern mythology, so I think I'll give The Virgin Suicides a shot, too. I rather liked the film, so I'm actually quite surprised I haven't read the book yet...

]]> One Hundred Years of Solitude 320 417 Gabriel García Márquez Martine 2 One Hundred Years of Solitude is a great novel. How did this happen? One Hundred Years of Solitude is not a great novel. In fact, I'm not even sure it qualifies as a novel at all. Rather it reads like a 450-page outline for a novel which accidentally got published instead of the finished product. Oops.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not disputing that Marquez has an imaginative mind. He does, unquestionably. Nor am I disputing that he knows how to come up with an interesting story. He obviously does, or this wouldn't be the hugely popular book it is. As far as I'm concerned, though, he forgot to put the finishing touches to his story. In his rush to get the bare bones on paper, he forgot to add the things which bring a story alive. Such as, you know, dialogue. Emotions. Motivations. Character arcs. Pretty basic things, really. By focusing on the external side of things, and by never allowing his characters to speak for themselves (the dialogue in the book amounts to about five pages, if that), Marquez keeps his reader from getting to know his characters, and from understanding why they do the things they do. The lack of characterisation is such that the story basically reads like an unchronological chronicle of deeds and events that go on for ever without any attempt at an explanation or psychological depth. And yes, they're interesting events, I'll grant you that, but they're told with such emotional detachment that I honestly didn't care for any of the characters who experienced them. I kept waiting for Marquez to focus on one character long enough to make me care about what happened to him or her, but he never did, choosing instead to introduce new characters (more Aurelianos... sigh) and move on. I wish to all the gods of fiction he had left out some twenty Aurelianos and focused on the remaining four instead. With three-dimensional characters rather than two-dimensional ones, this could have been a fabulous book. As it is, it's just a shell.

What a waste of a perfectly good story.]]> 4.10 1967 One Hundred Years of Solitude
author: Gabriel García Márquez
name: Martine
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1967
rating: 2
read at: 2008/07/01
date added: 2014/01/04
shelves: family-drama, magic-realism, modern-fiction, disappointing, south-american, historical-fiction, did-not-finish
review:
I must have missed something. Either that, or some wicked hypnotist has tricked the world (and quite a few of my friends, it would seem) into believing that One Hundred Years of Solitude is a great novel. How did this happen? One Hundred Years of Solitude is not a great novel. In fact, I'm not even sure it qualifies as a novel at all. Rather it reads like a 450-page outline for a novel which accidentally got published instead of the finished product. Oops.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not disputing that Marquez has an imaginative mind. He does, unquestionably. Nor am I disputing that he knows how to come up with an interesting story. He obviously does, or this wouldn't be the hugely popular book it is. As far as I'm concerned, though, he forgot to put the finishing touches to his story. In his rush to get the bare bones on paper, he forgot to add the things which bring a story alive. Such as, you know, dialogue. Emotions. Motivations. Character arcs. Pretty basic things, really. By focusing on the external side of things, and by never allowing his characters to speak for themselves (the dialogue in the book amounts to about five pages, if that), Marquez keeps his reader from getting to know his characters, and from understanding why they do the things they do. The lack of characterisation is such that the story basically reads like an unchronological chronicle of deeds and events that go on for ever without any attempt at an explanation or psychological depth. And yes, they're interesting events, I'll grant you that, but they're told with such emotional detachment that I honestly didn't care for any of the characters who experienced them. I kept waiting for Marquez to focus on one character long enough to make me care about what happened to him or her, but he never did, choosing instead to introduce new characters (more Aurelianos... sigh) and move on. I wish to all the gods of fiction he had left out some twenty Aurelianos and focused on the remaining four instead. With three-dimensional characters rather than two-dimensional ones, this could have been a fabulous book. As it is, it's just a shell.

What a waste of a perfectly good story.
]]> <![CDATA[Tales From Earthsea & The Other Wind (Earthsea Cycle, #5-6)]]> 68056 388 Ursula K. Le Guin 0739421239 Martine 0 to-read 4.37 2001 Tales From Earthsea & The Other Wind (Earthsea Cycle, #5-6)
author: Ursula K. Le Guin
name: Martine
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2001
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/01/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China]]> 9763 Book by Chang, Jung 666 Jung Chang 0007176155 Martine 5 Wild Swans may well be the most depressing book I've ever read. Don't let that keep you from giving it a try, though, for by some strange mechanism, it also ranks among the most uplifting books I've read, chronicling as it does a courage, resilience and will to survive which are nothing short of riveting. I could sum the book up by saying it's the greatest ode to courage and resilience ever written, or that it's one of those rare books which make you despair of humanity and then go a long way towards restoring your faith in it, but no, I'm not going to leave it at that. I'm going to do this book justice, because damn it, it deserves it.

For those of you who missed the hype back in the early 1990s, Wild Swans is the true history of three generations of women living through the horrible nightmare that is modern Chinese history. One is the author herself, now a naturalised British citizen. The second is her mother, an earnest Communist who raised a large family at a time which was extremely bad for family life. The third is her grandmother, who was married off as a concubine to a warlord as a girl and lived to see her family suffer for this unfortunate connection again and again. Using these three extraordinary lives as her main focus, Jung Chang tells the history of China's even more extraordinary twentieth century, from the late Qing Dynasty in the first decade of the century to the relatively free 1980s, a period comprising the Republican era, the battle between the Kwomintang and the Communists, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. It's gripping stuff even for those who know their Chinese history, and it blew me away when I first read it halfway through my Chinese degree, making me wonder (for the first time but not the last) whether I really wanted to devote the rest of my life to China. It took me two more years to decide that I did not, but this book, whose memory has always stayed with me, played a large part in that decision. To this day, I vividly remember the horror I experienced when I read the long section about the Cultural Revolution. It brought alive the terror of that particular episode of Chinese history better than any other book I'd read, and it shocked me to my core.

While Wild Swans is largely about the three women mentioned above, the most interesting person in the book (I hesitate to call him a character as he was obviously a very real person) is the author's father, a high-ranking cadre who genuinely believed in the Communist ideals and strove all his life to implement them in daily life. At first, he is infuriating in his refusal to grant his wife and children the privileges to which they are entitled as his relatives (on the grounds that to do so would amount to nepotism and corruption, which is precisely what the Communists are supposed to be trying to eradicate), but as the story progresses, you realise that there is something quite heroic about Mr Chang -- that he is, in his daughter's words, 'a moral man living in a land that [is] a moral void'. By the time the Cultural Revolution rolls around the corner, you feel such admiration for him that you'd personally drag him away from the humiliations and beatings he receives for sticking to his guns if you could, to prevent him having to experience that loss of faith and dreams which is bound to follow. His is a tragedy with a capital T, and it's harrowing -- one of the most painful things I've read, and then some.

Yet for all the personal struggles described in the book (and there are many of them), the main struggling character of Wild Swans is China itself. Chang does a great job chronicling what J.G. Ballard called 'the brain-death of a nation', sharing historical facts in a way non-sinologists will understand and showing the cruelty and mercilessness inherent in the Chinese -- or should that be humanity in general? She does a marvellous job describing the panic and unpredictability of the early Cultural Revolution, when absolutely everybody could be denounced at the drop of a hat, and when pettiness and lust for power reigned. Along the road, she provides fascinating insights into Mao Zedong's selfishness and megalomania, and into the hypocrisy and incongruity of the movements he set in motion, which brutalised human relationships like nothing else ever has. And all these atrocities she juxtaposes with the integrity and courage of her parents and grandmother, who get through it all with some hope and optimism left intact. It's a riveting story, and Chang tells it well.

If I have any complaints about Wild Swans, they concern the first few chapters and the romanisation of names. The early parts of the book, which deal with events the author did not witness herself, feel a bit aloof and lifeless. (It gets better once Chang starts telling about her parents, and once she reaches the part of the story to which she herself was privy (the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution), the book becomes quite unputdownable.) As for the romanisation, I wish the publisher had hired an editor skilled in Pinyin, as Chang's spelling of Chinese names is all over the place (something non-sinologists won't notice, but which is an eyesore to me). These are minor flaws, though, which hardly detract from the overall quality of the book. Wild Swans is an intensely compelling read -- moving, unsettling and unforgettable. It should be compulsory reading for everyone remotely interested in China, or in history in general. ]]> 4.29 1991 Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China
author: Jung Chang
name: Martine
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1991
rating: 5
read at: 1993/10/01
date added: 2014/01/01
shelves: asian, biography, dystopia, family-drama, favourites, history, memoirs, non-fiction, social-history
review:
Wild Swans may well be the most depressing book I've ever read. Don't let that keep you from giving it a try, though, for by some strange mechanism, it also ranks among the most uplifting books I've read, chronicling as it does a courage, resilience and will to survive which are nothing short of riveting. I could sum the book up by saying it's the greatest ode to courage and resilience ever written, or that it's one of those rare books which make you despair of humanity and then go a long way towards restoring your faith in it, but no, I'm not going to leave it at that. I'm going to do this book justice, because damn it, it deserves it.

For those of you who missed the hype back in the early 1990s, Wild Swans is the true history of three generations of women living through the horrible nightmare that is modern Chinese history. One is the author herself, now a naturalised British citizen. The second is her mother, an earnest Communist who raised a large family at a time which was extremely bad for family life. The third is her grandmother, who was married off as a concubine to a warlord as a girl and lived to see her family suffer for this unfortunate connection again and again. Using these three extraordinary lives as her main focus, Jung Chang tells the history of China's even more extraordinary twentieth century, from the late Qing Dynasty in the first decade of the century to the relatively free 1980s, a period comprising the Republican era, the battle between the Kwomintang and the Communists, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. It's gripping stuff even for those who know their Chinese history, and it blew me away when I first read it halfway through my Chinese degree, making me wonder (for the first time but not the last) whether I really wanted to devote the rest of my life to China. It took me two more years to decide that I did not, but this book, whose memory has always stayed with me, played a large part in that decision. To this day, I vividly remember the horror I experienced when I read the long section about the Cultural Revolution. It brought alive the terror of that particular episode of Chinese history better than any other book I'd read, and it shocked me to my core.

While Wild Swans is largely about the three women mentioned above, the most interesting person in the book (I hesitate to call him a character as he was obviously a very real person) is the author's father, a high-ranking cadre who genuinely believed in the Communist ideals and strove all his life to implement them in daily life. At first, he is infuriating in his refusal to grant his wife and children the privileges to which they are entitled as his relatives (on the grounds that to do so would amount to nepotism and corruption, which is precisely what the Communists are supposed to be trying to eradicate), but as the story progresses, you realise that there is something quite heroic about Mr Chang -- that he is, in his daughter's words, 'a moral man living in a land that [is] a moral void'. By the time the Cultural Revolution rolls around the corner, you feel such admiration for him that you'd personally drag him away from the humiliations and beatings he receives for sticking to his guns if you could, to prevent him having to experience that loss of faith and dreams which is bound to follow. His is a tragedy with a capital T, and it's harrowing -- one of the most painful things I've read, and then some.

Yet for all the personal struggles described in the book (and there are many of them), the main struggling character of Wild Swans is China itself. Chang does a great job chronicling what J.G. Ballard called 'the brain-death of a nation', sharing historical facts in a way non-sinologists will understand and showing the cruelty and mercilessness inherent in the Chinese -- or should that be humanity in general? She does a marvellous job describing the panic and unpredictability of the early Cultural Revolution, when absolutely everybody could be denounced at the drop of a hat, and when pettiness and lust for power reigned. Along the road, she provides fascinating insights into Mao Zedong's selfishness and megalomania, and into the hypocrisy and incongruity of the movements he set in motion, which brutalised human relationships like nothing else ever has. And all these atrocities she juxtaposes with the integrity and courage of her parents and grandmother, who get through it all with some hope and optimism left intact. It's a riveting story, and Chang tells it well.

If I have any complaints about Wild Swans, they concern the first few chapters and the romanisation of names. The early parts of the book, which deal with events the author did not witness herself, feel a bit aloof and lifeless. (It gets better once Chang starts telling about her parents, and once she reaches the part of the story to which she herself was privy (the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution), the book becomes quite unputdownable.) As for the romanisation, I wish the publisher had hired an editor skilled in Pinyin, as Chang's spelling of Chinese names is all over the place (something non-sinologists won't notice, but which is an eyesore to me). These are minor flaws, though, which hardly detract from the overall quality of the book. Wild Swans is an intensely compelling read -- moving, unsettling and unforgettable. It should be compulsory reading for everyone remotely interested in China, or in history in general.
]]> The Secret History 29044 559 Donna Tartt 1400031702 Martine 5 The Secret History roughly sums up the mood of the book. In it, the narrator, Richard Papen, says that he thinks his fatal flaw is 'a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs'. If you can relate to these words, chances are you'll love The Secret History. If not, you'll probably wonder what the fuss is all about. Personally, I can totally relate to these words, so I love the book. I've read it over half a dozen times, and while I do think it has its problems, I never fail to find it utterly gripping.

The Secret History is both an intellectual novel of ideas and a murder mystery without the whodunnit element. The reader learns right on the first page that Richard and his friends have killed one among their midst. The rest of the book goes on to explain how they came to their gruesome deed and what happened to them afterwards. Against all odds, it makes for compelling reading, despite the fact that you know right from the start who the killers are. Such is the power of Tartt's writing that you find yourself turning page after page, waiting for answers, justifications and possibly a sign of remorse. Once these have been dealt with, the book loses a bit of its power, but until that time, it's near perfect.

Donna Tartt's great gift as a writer is her magnificent talent for description. Her evocation of life at a small private university in New England with its oddball mix of ivory-tower intellectuals and ditzy cokeheads is rich in detail, both shocking and funny. If it's not entirely realistic, she makes it so. Likewise, her skill at characterisation is superb. While Richard is not entirely convincing as a male narrator (a fact I find more noticeable every time I re-read the book), he and his friends make up a fascinating cast of characters: six aloof, self-absorbed and arrogant intellectuals who are obsessed with ancient Greece and don't particularly care for modern life. They're snobs and they have major issues, but somehow that only makes them more alluring. Together, they form the ultimate inner circle, the kind of tight-knit group you know should always stay together. Which makes it almost understandable that they should be willing to kill anyone who might jeopardise that group dynamic, incomprehensible though this may seem to the average reader.

I can think of many reasons why The Secret History strikes such a chord with me. For one thing, I have a thing for timeless and ethereal stories, and this is one of those. Somehow the book has a dreamlike, almost hypnotic quality, despite it being very firmly set in the rather unromantic 1980s. I love that. For another thing, I have always been drawn to the unabashedly intellectual, and this book has that in spades. It makes geekdom alluring, and I just love Tartt for that. I wish I were as geeky as Henry!

Ultimately, what I think I respond to most in The Secret History is the friendship aspect. The Secret History is very much a book about friendship. It's about the very human yearning to belong and be accepted by people we admire. It's about the sacrifices we make to keep friendships intact, the insecurity we feel when we think we might not be completely accepted by our friends after all, and the paranoia we experience when it seems our friends may have betrayed us. About the feeling of invincibility we get from having great friends, and the melancholy and loneliness that follow the disintegration of a once-great friendship. The book basically reads like an elegy on a great friendship, and one doesn't necessarily have to share Richard's intellectual attitude towards life, his morality or even his morbid longing for the picturesque to be able to relate to that. It's enough to have yearned for close friendship and been insecure in friendship. And let's face it, who hasn't?

I do not think The Secret History is a perfect book. As I said, I find Richard somewhat unconvincing as a male character; there is too much about him that screams 'female author' to me. Furthermore, the ending is decidedly weak, although to be fair, I have no idea how else Tartt could have finished her book. The story does seem to be inexorably heading in that particular direction. Insofar as the ending reflects the disintegration that is going on in the characters' lives, it could probably be said to be appropriate. Still, I wish Tartt could have come up with something on a par with the rest of the book. If she had, this would have been a six-star book. I don't know many of those.
]]> 4.17 1992 The Secret History
author: Donna Tartt
name: Martine
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1992
rating: 5
read at: 1993/01/01
date added: 2013/12/31
shelves: favourites, modern-fiction, north-american, psychological-drama, thriller
review:
The first paragraph of The Secret History roughly sums up the mood of the book. In it, the narrator, Richard Papen, says that he thinks his fatal flaw is 'a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs'. If you can relate to these words, chances are you'll love The Secret History. If not, you'll probably wonder what the fuss is all about. Personally, I can totally relate to these words, so I love the book. I've read it over half a dozen times, and while I do think it has its problems, I never fail to find it utterly gripping.

The Secret History is both an intellectual novel of ideas and a murder mystery without the whodunnit element. The reader learns right on the first page that Richard and his friends have killed one among their midst. The rest of the book goes on to explain how they came to their gruesome deed and what happened to them afterwards. Against all odds, it makes for compelling reading, despite the fact that you know right from the start who the killers are. Such is the power of Tartt's writing that you find yourself turning page after page, waiting for answers, justifications and possibly a sign of remorse. Once these have been dealt with, the book loses a bit of its power, but until that time, it's near perfect.

Donna Tartt's great gift as a writer is her magnificent talent for description. Her evocation of life at a small private university in New England with its oddball mix of ivory-tower intellectuals and ditzy cokeheads is rich in detail, both shocking and funny. If it's not entirely realistic, she makes it so. Likewise, her skill at characterisation is superb. While Richard is not entirely convincing as a male narrator (a fact I find more noticeable every time I re-read the book), he and his friends make up a fascinating cast of characters: six aloof, self-absorbed and arrogant intellectuals who are obsessed with ancient Greece and don't particularly care for modern life. They're snobs and they have major issues, but somehow that only makes them more alluring. Together, they form the ultimate inner circle, the kind of tight-knit group you know should always stay together. Which makes it almost understandable that they should be willing to kill anyone who might jeopardise that group dynamic, incomprehensible though this may seem to the average reader.

I can think of many reasons why The Secret History strikes such a chord with me. For one thing, I have a thing for timeless and ethereal stories, and this is one of those. Somehow the book has a dreamlike, almost hypnotic quality, despite it being very firmly set in the rather unromantic 1980s. I love that. For another thing, I have always been drawn to the unabashedly intellectual, and this book has that in spades. It makes geekdom alluring, and I just love Tartt for that. I wish I were as geeky as Henry!

Ultimately, what I think I respond to most in The Secret History is the friendship aspect. The Secret History is very much a book about friendship. It's about the very human yearning to belong and be accepted by people we admire. It's about the sacrifices we make to keep friendships intact, the insecurity we feel when we think we might not be completely accepted by our friends after all, and the paranoia we experience when it seems our friends may have betrayed us. About the feeling of invincibility we get from having great friends, and the melancholy and loneliness that follow the disintegration of a once-great friendship. The book basically reads like an elegy on a great friendship, and one doesn't necessarily have to share Richard's intellectual attitude towards life, his morality or even his morbid longing for the picturesque to be able to relate to that. It's enough to have yearned for close friendship and been insecure in friendship. And let's face it, who hasn't?

I do not think The Secret History is a perfect book. As I said, I find Richard somewhat unconvincing as a male character; there is too much about him that screams 'female author' to me. Furthermore, the ending is decidedly weak, although to be fair, I have no idea how else Tartt could have finished her book. The story does seem to be inexorably heading in that particular direction. Insofar as the ending reflects the disintegration that is going on in the characters' lives, it could probably be said to be appropriate. Still, I wish Tartt could have come up with something on a par with the rest of the book. If she had, this would have been a six-star book. I don't know many of those.

]]> <![CDATA[The Eyre Affair (Thursday Next, #1)]]> 107390 Thursday Next is a literary detective without equal, fear, or boyfriend. Thursday is on the trail of the villainous Archeron Hades who has been kidnapping characters from the works of fiction and holding them to ransom. Jayne Eyre herself has been plucked from the novel of the same name, and Thursday must find a way into the book to repair the damage.

She also has to find time to hald the Crimean conflict, persuade the man she loves to marry her, rescue her aunt from inside a Wordsworth poem and figure out who really wrote Shakespeare's plays. Aided and abetted by a cast of characters that includes her time-travelling father, Jack Schitt of the all-powerful Goliath Corporation, a pet dodo named Pickwick and Edward Rochester himself, Thursday embarks on an adventure that will take your breath away.]]> 375 Jasper Fforde 0340825766 Martine 4 really wrote Shakespeare's plays. Oh, and persuade the man she loves to marry her, for obviously, there is some romance, too.

Fforde is on to a great idea here. His recreation of England is brilliant; if it weren't for the almighty Goliath Corporation, who are running the place in a rather unpleasant manner, I think every bibliophile would want to live there. References to the classics are abundant, as are jokes. As The Independent said, it's a silly book for smart people, combining erudition with accessible humour, ingenuity and quite a bit of charm. English lit fans will eat it up. ]]> 3.99 2001 The Eyre Affair (Thursday Next, #1)
author: Jasper Fforde
name: Martine
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2001
rating: 4
read at: 2007/12/01
date added: 2013/12/28
shelves: british, modern-fiction, humour, science-fiction, postmodern
review:
Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series is an awful lot of fun for English lit geeks who cherish their classics. It is set in an alternate England where people have cloned dodos for pets, croquet is the national sport, time travelling is a regular part of life and literature enjoys the kind of position that beer, football, cricket and TV have today, meaning that the country eats, drinks and breathes literature. It would be a perfect place to live, if it weren't for the fact that (1) it is run by a rather sinister and megalomaniac company, the Goliath Corporation; (2) the Crimean War is still going strong after 131 years and lots of people are dying; and (3) border skirmishes with the Socialist Republic of Wales are frequent. In this rather interesting world lives Thursday Next, a young literary detective who gets involved in the literary crime of the century: the kidnapping of Jane Eyre, which threatens to rid us of the book for ever. Thursday has her work cut out for her -- not only does she have to enter the world of fiction to liberate Jane (and her own aunt, who has been trapped in a Wordsworth poem), but she also has to eliminate the super villain who kidnapped her, halt the Crimean conflict and figure out who really wrote Shakespeare's plays. Oh, and persuade the man she loves to marry her, for obviously, there is some romance, too.

Fforde is on to a great idea here. His recreation of England is brilliant; if it weren't for the almighty Goliath Corporation, who are running the place in a rather unpleasant manner, I think every bibliophile would want to live there. References to the classics are abundant, as are jokes. As The Independent said, it's a silly book for smart people, combining erudition with accessible humour, ingenuity and quite a bit of charm. English lit fans will eat it up.
]]> <![CDATA[South of the Border, West of the Sun]]> 17799 Alternate cover edition here.

Growing up in the suburbs of post-war Japan, it seemed to Hajime that everyone but him had brothers and sisters. His sole companion was Shimamoto, also an only child. Together they spent long afternoons listening to her father's record collection. But when his family moved away, the two lost touch. Now Hajime is in his thirties. After a decade of drifting he has found happiness with his loving wife and two daughters, and success running a jazz bar. Then Shimamoto reappears. She is beautiful, intense, enveloped in mystery. Hajime is catapulted into the past, putting at risk all he has in the present.]]> 190 Haruki Murakami 0099448572 Martine 5
South of the Border, West of the Sun is set in a familiar Murakami landscape where lonely men listen to jazz and classical music, get obsessed with mysterious women with death in their eyes, and crave a connection with just one fellow soul. This time around, the protagonist is Hajime, a man in his late thirties who seems to be going through a bit of a mid-life crisis. Reasonably happily married and the successful owner of two jazz bars, Hajime seems to have it all, except for two things: he can't really connect to anyone, and he is haunted by memories of the women he has wronged. Most of all, he is haunted by the memory of his childhood friend Shimamoto, the only person in his life to whom he has ever been close, but of whom he lost sight at age twelve. And then Shimamoto suddenly reappears in his life, tempting him with promises of closeness and understanding and confusing him profoundly.

As stories of mid-life crises and marital infidelity go, this one is nothing out of the ordinary. It follows Hajime through his obsession with Shimamoto and his insecurities, regrets and justifications, leading him all the way to some modicum of self-discovery. So far, so generic adultery novel. What sets the book apart from countless other such books is its mood. Like other Murakami books, South of the Border, West of the Sun is a mood piece. It has a dreamlike, timeless quality, a mellow intensity, and a jazz-and-rain-fuelled melancholy which occasionally drips off the pages. It evokes loneliness and obsession in a way few other authors manage to evoke them. It's like being submerged in a bath of longing and nostalgia, and I, for one, really enjoy that sort of thing. There's something quite cathartic about it.

Much has been said about Hajime, the protagonist of South of the Border. Like many Murakami characters, Hajime is not an action hero; he spends most of the book waiting for fate to deal him a lucky card, and when he finally gets it, he doesn't really know what to do with it. Nor does he seem to notice that the cards he was initially dealt were actually quite good. He is a dreamer and a drifter, floating through a world in which he doesn't seem properly anchored, feeling rather than observing, longing rather than acting. He is haunted by memories and wallows in his own mistakes without having the guts to address them. He is not necessarily the world's most attractive protagonist, but all the same it is interesting watching the world through his eyes, sensing his guilt and sharing his cravings. And if he doesn't seem to be all that different from countless other Murakami protagonists, well, so be it. That's Murakami for you -- writing the same story featuring the same protagonist over and over again, but in a way which keeps you coming back for more.

As for Murakami's refusal to tie up the loose ends in this book, which seems to baffle certain reviewers, I like that. I like that we never find out exactly what Shimamoto has been up to for all these years. I like that her disappearance remains unexplained. I even like the fact that we never find out her first name (Hajime keeps calling her by her family name, even when they are having sex). It adds an air of detachment and mystery to the novel, which in turn just adds to its dreamlike quality. It allows you to fill in the blanks yourself, and at the end of the day, that is what I like most about good fiction -- its ability to make you fantasise and write parts of the story yourself. Maybe that's why I like Murakami so much; he draws me into brilliant moodscapes and leaves me there, thinking, feeling, wondering what I would do in a given position. Sometimes I wish I never had to leave his world, but alas, even the best jazz gets tedious after a while...]]> 3.89 1992 South of the Border, West of the Sun
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Martine
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1992
rating: 5
read at: 2008/04/01
date added: 2013/12/27
shelves: asian, favourites, modern-fiction, psychological-drama
review:
I never fail to be impressed by the way Murakami captures mood and feelings. Even in his less fantastic novels, of which this is one, he draws you into a world that is all his, and so full of possibilities and connections that you feel you could grasp them if you reached out. Except you don't, because in Murakami's universe it's easier to stay put and wait than to get actively involved. It's about memories and reminiscences, about wishes and alternate realities, and if you were to reach out and touch anything, you would break the carefully crafted atmosphere, leaving nothing but some loner's neurotic ramblings about the things he should have done but sadly never did. You wouldn't want to do that, now would you?

South of the Border, West of the Sun is set in a familiar Murakami landscape where lonely men listen to jazz and classical music, get obsessed with mysterious women with death in their eyes, and crave a connection with just one fellow soul. This time around, the protagonist is Hajime, a man in his late thirties who seems to be going through a bit of a mid-life crisis. Reasonably happily married and the successful owner of two jazz bars, Hajime seems to have it all, except for two things: he can't really connect to anyone, and he is haunted by memories of the women he has wronged. Most of all, he is haunted by the memory of his childhood friend Shimamoto, the only person in his life to whom he has ever been close, but of whom he lost sight at age twelve. And then Shimamoto suddenly reappears in his life, tempting him with promises of closeness and understanding and confusing him profoundly.

As stories of mid-life crises and marital infidelity go, this one is nothing out of the ordinary. It follows Hajime through his obsession with Shimamoto and his insecurities, regrets and justifications, leading him all the way to some modicum of self-discovery. So far, so generic adultery novel. What sets the book apart from countless other such books is its mood. Like other Murakami books, South of the Border, West of the Sun is a mood piece. It has a dreamlike, timeless quality, a mellow intensity, and a jazz-and-rain-fuelled melancholy which occasionally drips off the pages. It evokes loneliness and obsession in a way few other authors manage to evoke them. It's like being submerged in a bath of longing and nostalgia, and I, for one, really enjoy that sort of thing. There's something quite cathartic about it.

Much has been said about Hajime, the protagonist of South of the Border. Like many Murakami characters, Hajime is not an action hero; he spends most of the book waiting for fate to deal him a lucky card, and when he finally gets it, he doesn't really know what to do with it. Nor does he seem to notice that the cards he was initially dealt were actually quite good. He is a dreamer and a drifter, floating through a world in which he doesn't seem properly anchored, feeling rather than observing, longing rather than acting. He is haunted by memories and wallows in his own mistakes without having the guts to address them. He is not necessarily the world's most attractive protagonist, but all the same it is interesting watching the world through his eyes, sensing his guilt and sharing his cravings. And if he doesn't seem to be all that different from countless other Murakami protagonists, well, so be it. That's Murakami for you -- writing the same story featuring the same protagonist over and over again, but in a way which keeps you coming back for more.

As for Murakami's refusal to tie up the loose ends in this book, which seems to baffle certain reviewers, I like that. I like that we never find out exactly what Shimamoto has been up to for all these years. I like that her disappearance remains unexplained. I even like the fact that we never find out her first name (Hajime keeps calling her by her family name, even when they are having sex). It adds an air of detachment and mystery to the novel, which in turn just adds to its dreamlike quality. It allows you to fill in the blanks yourself, and at the end of the day, that is what I like most about good fiction -- its ability to make you fantasise and write parts of the story yourself. Maybe that's why I like Murakami so much; he draws me into brilliant moodscapes and leaves me there, thinking, feeling, wondering what I would do in a given position. Sometimes I wish I never had to leave his world, but alas, even the best jazz gets tedious after a while...
]]> Night 1617 Night is the terrifying record of Elie Wiesel's memories of the death of his family, the death of his own innocence, and his despair as a deeply observant Jew confronting the absolute evil of man. This new translation by his wife and most frequent translator, Marion Wiesel, corrects important details and presents the most accurate rendering in English of Elie Wiesel's testimony to what happened in the camps and of his unforgettable message that this horror must simply never be allowed to happen again.]]> 120 Elie Wiesel 0374500010 Martine 4 Night is a chilling account of the Holocaust and the dehumanisation and brutalisation of the human spirit under extreme circumstances, the fact remains that I've read better ones. Better written ones, and more insightful ones, too.

Night is Elie Wiesel's somewhat fictionalised account of the year he spent at Auschwitz and Buchenwald. It's a chilling story about his experiences in and between concentration camps, his gradual loss of faith (he was a very observant Jew who obviously wondered where God was while his people were being exterminated), and his feelings of guilt when he realised that his struggle for survival was making him insensitive towards his dying father. It's gruesome, chilling material, and I felt very quiet after having read it. Yet I also felt vaguely unsatisfied with the book. I wanted more detail. I wanted fleshed-out writing rather than a succession of meaningful one-line paragraphs. I wanted less heavy-handed symbolism (the book very much centres on troubled father-and-son relationships, to echo the one central Father-and-Son one) and more actual feeling. I wanted a writer (and a translator) who knew better than to call an SS officer 'an SS'. And most of all, I wanted a less abrupt ending. I wanted to ask Wiesel what happened in the immediate aftermath of the liberation of Buchenwald. I wanted to ask him what happened to his leg, on which he marched for several gruesome days just days after having undergone an operation, and how he picked up the pieces afterwards, and why on earth his two eldest sisters, who died in Auschwitz as well as his mother and younger sister, never warranted more than a single mention. The latter was an example of seriously shoddy writing, I thought.

Perhaps my questions were answered in the original version of Night, which never got published. In his introduction to the new English translation of Night, Wiesel mentions that the book as it is today is a severely abridged version of a much longer Yiddish original called And the World Remained Silent. I think I can see why the original wasn't published (quite apart from the fact that the world wasn't ready yet for concentration camp literature, the few quotes provided in the introduction make for heavy reading). The abridged version definitely seems more readable than the full-length one, and does an admirable job getting the facts across. Even so, I think the publishers might have gone a step too far in abridging the book to the extent that they did. No doubt the very brevity of Night is one of the reasons why it's so popular today, but personally, I would have liked to see a middle road between the original (detailed) manuscript and the incredibly spare barebones version sold now. Don't get me wrong, the abridged version is effective, but as far as I'm concerned, it's the Holocaust for people with short attention spans. I prefer Primo Levi and Ella Lingens-Reiner's more complete accounts of life in the camps myself, not to mention several Dutch books which sadly never got translated into other languages.

But still. Night is an important book, and one that deserves to be widely read. In fact, one that should be widely read, by people of all ages and nationalities, to prevent nightmare like this ever happening again. ]]> 4.38 1956 Night
author: Elie Wiesel
name: Martine
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1956
rating: 4
read at: 2008/07/01
date added: 2013/12/26
shelves: continental-european, history, historical-fiction, memoirs, war
review:
This book has garnered so many five-star reviews and deals with such important subject matter that it almost feels like an act of heresy to give it a mere four stars. Yet that is exactly what I'm going to do, for while Night is a chilling account of the Holocaust and the dehumanisation and brutalisation of the human spirit under extreme circumstances, the fact remains that I've read better ones. Better written ones, and more insightful ones, too.

Night is Elie Wiesel's somewhat fictionalised account of the year he spent at Auschwitz and Buchenwald. It's a chilling story about his experiences in and between concentration camps, his gradual loss of faith (he was a very observant Jew who obviously wondered where God was while his people were being exterminated), and his feelings of guilt when he realised that his struggle for survival was making him insensitive towards his dying father. It's gruesome, chilling material, and I felt very quiet after having read it. Yet I also felt vaguely unsatisfied with the book. I wanted more detail. I wanted fleshed-out writing rather than a succession of meaningful one-line paragraphs. I wanted less heavy-handed symbolism (the book very much centres on troubled father-and-son relationships, to echo the one central Father-and-Son one) and more actual feeling. I wanted a writer (and a translator) who knew better than to call an SS officer 'an SS'. And most of all, I wanted a less abrupt ending. I wanted to ask Wiesel what happened in the immediate aftermath of the liberation of Buchenwald. I wanted to ask him what happened to his leg, on which he marched for several gruesome days just days after having undergone an operation, and how he picked up the pieces afterwards, and why on earth his two eldest sisters, who died in Auschwitz as well as his mother and younger sister, never warranted more than a single mention. The latter was an example of seriously shoddy writing, I thought.

Perhaps my questions were answered in the original version of Night, which never got published. In his introduction to the new English translation of Night, Wiesel mentions that the book as it is today is a severely abridged version of a much longer Yiddish original called And the World Remained Silent. I think I can see why the original wasn't published (quite apart from the fact that the world wasn't ready yet for concentration camp literature, the few quotes provided in the introduction make for heavy reading). The abridged version definitely seems more readable than the full-length one, and does an admirable job getting the facts across. Even so, I think the publishers might have gone a step too far in abridging the book to the extent that they did. No doubt the very brevity of Night is one of the reasons why it's so popular today, but personally, I would have liked to see a middle road between the original (detailed) manuscript and the incredibly spare barebones version sold now. Don't get me wrong, the abridged version is effective, but as far as I'm concerned, it's the Holocaust for people with short attention spans. I prefer Primo Levi and Ella Lingens-Reiner's more complete accounts of life in the camps myself, not to mention several Dutch books which sadly never got translated into other languages.

But still. Night is an important book, and one that deserves to be widely read. In fact, one that should be widely read, by people of all ages and nationalities, to prevent nightmare like this ever happening again.
]]> The Liar 1068412 Adrian Healey is magnificently unprepared for the long littleness of life; unprepared too for the afternoon in Salzburg when he will witness the savage murder of a Hungarian violinist; unprepared to learn about the Mendax device; unprepared for more murders and wholly unprepared for the truth.
The Liar is a thrilling, sophisticated and laugh out loud hilarious novel from a brilliantly talented writer.]]> 366 Stephen Fry 0749305401 Martine 4 The Liar, the first of the four novels he has published so far. An irreverent and intelligent take on such British institutions as the public-school novel, the Cambridge novel and the spy novel, it is best appreciated by people who have an affinity for such things, but really, anyone with a taste for British humour should enjoy it. It's basically a late-twentieth-century P.G. Wodehouse update with some smut thrown in for good measure, and if that doesn't appeal to you, you're not a proper Anglophile.

A non-linear and somewhat uneven debut novel, The Liar tells the story of Adrian Healey, an impossibly smug, clever and decadent teenage Oscar Wilde wannabe who lives 'by pastiche and pretence', in Fry's words. Adrian is an inveterate liar, which probably sounds bad but isn't, as the lies he comes up with are so outrageous they're actually quite hilarious. The novel follows Adrian wisecracking and scheming his way first through public school (where he develops an obsessive crush on a class-mate) and then through Cambridge, where, among other things, he forges a Dickens manuscript, strikes up a friendship with a very colourful professor (the brilliant Donald Trefusis) and gets involved in an espionage story of sorts. The latter sub-plot is a bit dodgy, but the rest of the book is superb -- a delightful mix of great characters (someone introduce me to a real-life Adrian and Trefusis, please), brilliant dialogue, dexterous verbal games, highbrow literary references, filthy humour, outrageous gayness and, yes, some mystery, too. It's bold, it's imaginative, it's laugh-out-loud funny and has Stephen Fry written all over it, and should be a must-read title for anyone who likes British humour.
]]> 3.50 1991 The Liar
author: Stephen Fry
name: Martine
average rating: 3.50
book published: 1991
rating: 4
read at: 1994/01/01
date added: 2013/12/24
shelves: british, favourites, glbt, humour, modern-fiction
review:
Stephen Fry ranks among my favourite persons on earth. There's something about his terribly English combination of wit, erudition and a dirty mind that never fails to delight me, and it shines brightly in The Liar, the first of the four novels he has published so far. An irreverent and intelligent take on such British institutions as the public-school novel, the Cambridge novel and the spy novel, it is best appreciated by people who have an affinity for such things, but really, anyone with a taste for British humour should enjoy it. It's basically a late-twentieth-century P.G. Wodehouse update with some smut thrown in for good measure, and if that doesn't appeal to you, you're not a proper Anglophile.

A non-linear and somewhat uneven debut novel, The Liar tells the story of Adrian Healey, an impossibly smug, clever and decadent teenage Oscar Wilde wannabe who lives 'by pastiche and pretence', in Fry's words. Adrian is an inveterate liar, which probably sounds bad but isn't, as the lies he comes up with are so outrageous they're actually quite hilarious. The novel follows Adrian wisecracking and scheming his way first through public school (where he develops an obsessive crush on a class-mate) and then through Cambridge, where, among other things, he forges a Dickens manuscript, strikes up a friendship with a very colourful professor (the brilliant Donald Trefusis) and gets involved in an espionage story of sorts. The latter sub-plot is a bit dodgy, but the rest of the book is superb -- a delightful mix of great characters (someone introduce me to a real-life Adrian and Trefusis, please), brilliant dialogue, dexterous verbal games, highbrow literary references, filthy humour, outrageous gayness and, yes, some mystery, too. It's bold, it's imaginative, it's laugh-out-loud funny and has Stephen Fry written all over it, and should be a must-read title for anyone who likes British humour.

]]> Dracula 297823 389 Bram Stoker 0192833863 Martine 3
These are pretty much the first words spoken to Jonathan Harker, one of the heroes of Bram Stoker's Dracula, upon his arrival at Count Dracula's castle in Transylvania, just minutes after a nightmare journey through the landscape of gothic horror: darkness, howling wolves, flames erupting out of the blue, frightened horses. Within a few days of his arrival, Harker will find himself talking of the Count's 'wickedly blazing eyes' and 'new schemes of villainy' and have some hair-raising encounters with the man who is now the world's most famous vampire: 'The last I saw of Count Dracula was his kissing his hand to me, with a red light of triumph in his eyes, and with a smile that Judas in hell might be proud of.' Several adventures involving sharp teeth, mirrors, garlic, crucifixes, bloody-mouthed corpses and big stakes will ensue.

The above quotations should make it abundantly clear what kind of book Dracula is. It's sensation fiction, written nearly half a century after the heyday of that genre. It's a cross between an epistolary novel, a detective novel and a save-my-wife story, and it's full of scares, horror and disgust, all described in a lurid tone that befits the subject: the living dead. Or the Un-Dead, as the book's other hero, my countryman Van Helsing, calls them.

Sadly, Van Helsing is one of my main problems with the book. While I love his heroism, his 'Let's-do-it' attitude and his unceasing struggle for Mina's soul, I find him entirely unconvincing as a Dutchman. I wish to God (with a crucifix and everything!) that I could switch off my inner linguist and appreciate the story for its narrative qualities rather than its linguistic aspects, but Stoker has Van Helsing indulge in so many linguistic improbabilities ('Are you of belief now, friend John?') that it quite took me out of the story, again and again and again. I'm aware this is not a problem that will bother many readers, but I for one dearly wish Stoker had listened to some actual Dutchmen before making the hero of his story one. Then perhaps he also would have refrained from making the poor man mutter German whenever he is supposed to speak his mother tongue. ('Mein Gott' is German, Mr Stoker. I mean, really.)

Linguistic inaccuracies aside (there are many in the book), Dracula has a few more problems. For one thing, the bad guy doesn't make enough appearances. Whenever Stoker focuses on Dracula, the story comes alive -- menace drips off the pages, and the reader finds himself alternately shivering with excitement and recoiling in horror. However, when Dracula is not around (which is most of the second half of the book), the story loses power, to the point where the second half of the book is actually quite dull. In addition, the story seems a little random and unfocused. Remember the 1992 film, in which Dracula obsesses about Mina Harker (Jonathan's wife) because she is his long-lost wife reincarnated? That conceit had grandeur, romance, passion, tragedy. And what was more, it made sense. It explained why Dracula comes all the way from Transylvania to England to find Mina, and why he wants to make her his bride despite the fact that she is being protected by people who clearly want him dead. In the book, however, Mina is merely Jonathan's wife (no reincarnation involved), a random lady Dracula has sunk his teeth into, and while this entitles her to some sympathy, it lacks the grand romantic quality the film had. I guess it's unfair to blame an author for not thinking of an improvement film-makers later made to his story, but I think Stoker rather missed an opportunity there.

And then there's the fact that Stoker seems to be an early proponent of the Robert Jordan School of Writing, meaning he takes an awful lot of time setting the scene, only to end the book on a whimper. The ending to Dracula is so anticlimactic it's rather baffling. Did Stoker run out of paper and ink? Did he want to finish the story before Dracula's brides came and got him? I guess we'll never know.

Still, despite its many flaws Dracula is an exciting read (well, the first half is, anyway), and Stoker undeniably left a legacy that will last for centuries to come. In that respect, Dracula deserves all the praise that has been heaped on it. I still think it could have been better, though. Much better.]]> 3.77 1897 Dracula
author: Bram Stoker
name: Martine
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1897
rating: 3
read at: 1995/12/01
date added: 2013/12/18
shelves: british, film, gothic, nineteenth-century
review:
'Welcome to my house. Come freely. Go safely. And leave something of the happiness you bring!'

These are pretty much the first words spoken to Jonathan Harker, one of the heroes of Bram Stoker's Dracula, upon his arrival at Count Dracula's castle in Transylvania, just minutes after a nightmare journey through the landscape of gothic horror: darkness, howling wolves, flames erupting out of the blue, frightened horses. Within a few days of his arrival, Harker will find himself talking of the Count's 'wickedly blazing eyes' and 'new schemes of villainy' and have some hair-raising encounters with the man who is now the world's most famous vampire: 'The last I saw of Count Dracula was his kissing his hand to me, with a red light of triumph in his eyes, and with a smile that Judas in hell might be proud of.' Several adventures involving sharp teeth, mirrors, garlic, crucifixes, bloody-mouthed corpses and big stakes will ensue.

The above quotations should make it abundantly clear what kind of book Dracula is. It's sensation fiction, written nearly half a century after the heyday of that genre. It's a cross between an epistolary novel, a detective novel and a save-my-wife story, and it's full of scares, horror and disgust, all described in a lurid tone that befits the subject: the living dead. Or the Un-Dead, as the book's other hero, my countryman Van Helsing, calls them.

Sadly, Van Helsing is one of my main problems with the book. While I love his heroism, his 'Let's-do-it' attitude and his unceasing struggle for Mina's soul, I find him entirely unconvincing as a Dutchman. I wish to God (with a crucifix and everything!) that I could switch off my inner linguist and appreciate the story for its narrative qualities rather than its linguistic aspects, but Stoker has Van Helsing indulge in so many linguistic improbabilities ('Are you of belief now, friend John?') that it quite took me out of the story, again and again and again. I'm aware this is not a problem that will bother many readers, but I for one dearly wish Stoker had listened to some actual Dutchmen before making the hero of his story one. Then perhaps he also would have refrained from making the poor man mutter German whenever he is supposed to speak his mother tongue. ('Mein Gott' is German, Mr Stoker. I mean, really.)

Linguistic inaccuracies aside (there are many in the book), Dracula has a few more problems. For one thing, the bad guy doesn't make enough appearances. Whenever Stoker focuses on Dracula, the story comes alive -- menace drips off the pages, and the reader finds himself alternately shivering with excitement and recoiling in horror. However, when Dracula is not around (which is most of the second half of the book), the story loses power, to the point where the second half of the book is actually quite dull. In addition, the story seems a little random and unfocused. Remember the 1992 film, in which Dracula obsesses about Mina Harker (Jonathan's wife) because she is his long-lost wife reincarnated? That conceit had grandeur, romance, passion, tragedy. And what was more, it made sense. It explained why Dracula comes all the way from Transylvania to England to find Mina, and why he wants to make her his bride despite the fact that she is being protected by people who clearly want him dead. In the book, however, Mina is merely Jonathan's wife (no reincarnation involved), a random lady Dracula has sunk his teeth into, and while this entitles her to some sympathy, it lacks the grand romantic quality the film had. I guess it's unfair to blame an author for not thinking of an improvement film-makers later made to his story, but I think Stoker rather missed an opportunity there.

And then there's the fact that Stoker seems to be an early proponent of the Robert Jordan School of Writing, meaning he takes an awful lot of time setting the scene, only to end the book on a whimper. The ending to Dracula is so anticlimactic it's rather baffling. Did Stoker run out of paper and ink? Did he want to finish the story before Dracula's brides came and got him? I guess we'll never know.

Still, despite its many flaws Dracula is an exciting read (well, the first half is, anyway), and Stoker undeniably left a legacy that will last for centuries to come. In that respect, Dracula deserves all the praise that has been heaped on it. I still think it could have been better, though. Much better.
]]> Atonement 6867
On a hot summer day in 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses the flirtation between her older sister, Cecilia, and Robbie Turner, the son of a servant. But Briony’s incomplete grasp of adult motives and her precocious imagination bring about a crime that will change all their lives, a crime whose repercussions Atonement follows through the chaos and carnage of World War II and into the close of the twentieth century.]]> 351 Ian McEwan 038572179X Martine 5 Atonement, which quite impressed me when it was first published. And guess what? It was an even more rewarding experience the second time around. Knowing what was coming -- knowing the plot twist at the end -- helped me focus on the quality of the writing rather than on the development of the story, and as always, McEwan's prose completely sucked me in. He is, quite simply, one of the most talented authors alive, and he uses his gift to great effect here.

I'm not really going to go into the plot here, because the less the first-time reader knows about the book, the better. Suffice it to say that it is about an imaginative thirteen-year-old who witnesses a few things she doesn't understand, draws the wrong conclusions and ends up ruining the lives of two people near and dear to her. The first half of the book deals with the event itself and the hours leading up to it; the second half deals with her attempts to, well, deal with it -- atone for it, so to speak.

As always, McEwan excels at setting the scene. His description of a hot summer afternoon in a 1935 English country house is lush and sumptuous, his evocation of a young soldier's struggle to reach home after the disastrous 1940 battle of Dunkirk is haunting, and his look into the horrors of a war-time London hospital is gruesome in all its detail. Amazingly, McEwan manages to find beauty even in the most horrific scenes, which is one of the things which set him apart as a writer. As usual, though, it's the psychological stuff that is really outstanding. McEwan has a knack for taking his readers deep into his characters' minds, letting them share their most intimate, most uncomfortable thoughts and feelings. Sometimes these thoughts are a little disturbing (those of you who have read his earlier works will know what I mean), but usually they have the effect of completely drawing the reader into the story. The latter is definitely the case in Atonement. By presenting the story from different perspectives and vantage points, McEwan provides the reader with a complete and engrossing view of a life-changing event and its aftermath. All the different perspectives ring true, and together they tell a marvellous tale of perception, loyalty, anger, secrets, lost love, shame, guilt, obsession with the past and -- yes -- atonement. And about writing, for more than anything else, Atonement is about the difference between fiction and reality, the power of the imagination and the human urge to write and rewrite history -- to write destiny and play God.

I've heard quite a few people say that they found the first half of the novel too slow and ponderous, wondering why McEwan felt the need to devote nearly two hundred pages to the events of a single day. Personally, I found that part of the book to be utterly brilliant in its rich, Woolf-like glory. As far as I'm concerned, the atmosphere of the first half is superbly drawn, with each character down to the most minor one being well realised and the tensions and suspense at work almost being made tangible. For me, it is the second half of the book which has problems (albeit minor ones), in that I found the jumps in time and perspective jarring and the (otherwise fascinating) chapter about Robbie's adventures in France somewhat unreal. Of course, there are good reasons for the slightly unreal quality of the Dunkirk chapter (which the film captured just brilliantly), but still, it didn't quite work for me; it felt a bit out of place. Thankfully, though, the rest of the book worked just wonderfully for me. Like other McEwan books, it left me with a haunting question -- 'What if...?'

As for McEwan's impressive insight into the mind of a thirteen-year-old girl, which other reviewers have called scary, I think that has everything to do with Briony's being a writer. She is hardly your average thirteen-year-old (I think even McEwan would have a hard time coming up with one of those!); rather she is a writer (a good one), and that, of course, is something McEwan knows all about. As a fellow writer, I greatly enjoyed seeing the world through Briony's eyes, and hope her author will live to her old age and write as many good books as he has her doing.
]]> 3.94 2001 Atonement
author: Ian McEwan
name: Martine
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2001
rating: 5
read at: 2008/02/01
date added: 2013/12/17
shelves: british, favourites, historical-fiction, film, modern-fiction, family-drama
review:
Having recently seen and loved the magnificent film adaptation, I decided to reread Atonement, which quite impressed me when it was first published. And guess what? It was an even more rewarding experience the second time around. Knowing what was coming -- knowing the plot twist at the end -- helped me focus on the quality of the writing rather than on the development of the story, and as always, McEwan's prose completely sucked me in. He is, quite simply, one of the most talented authors alive, and he uses his gift to great effect here.

I'm not really going to go into the plot here, because the less the first-time reader knows about the book, the better. Suffice it to say that it is about an imaginative thirteen-year-old who witnesses a few things she doesn't understand, draws the wrong conclusions and ends up ruining the lives of two people near and dear to her. The first half of the book deals with the event itself and the hours leading up to it; the second half deals with her attempts to, well, deal with it -- atone for it, so to speak.

As always, McEwan excels at setting the scene. His description of a hot summer afternoon in a 1935 English country house is lush and sumptuous, his evocation of a young soldier's struggle to reach home after the disastrous 1940 battle of Dunkirk is haunting, and his look into the horrors of a war-time London hospital is gruesome in all its detail. Amazingly, McEwan manages to find beauty even in the most horrific scenes, which is one of the things which set him apart as a writer. As usual, though, it's the psychological stuff that is really outstanding. McEwan has a knack for taking his readers deep into his characters' minds, letting them share their most intimate, most uncomfortable thoughts and feelings. Sometimes these thoughts are a little disturbing (those of you who have read his earlier works will know what I mean), but usually they have the effect of completely drawing the reader into the story. The latter is definitely the case in Atonement. By presenting the story from different perspectives and vantage points, McEwan provides the reader with a complete and engrossing view of a life-changing event and its aftermath. All the different perspectives ring true, and together they tell a marvellous tale of perception, loyalty, anger, secrets, lost love, shame, guilt, obsession with the past and -- yes -- atonement. And about writing, for more than anything else, Atonement is about the difference between fiction and reality, the power of the imagination and the human urge to write and rewrite history -- to write destiny and play God.

I've heard quite a few people say that they found the first half of the novel too slow and ponderous, wondering why McEwan felt the need to devote nearly two hundred pages to the events of a single day. Personally, I found that part of the book to be utterly brilliant in its rich, Woolf-like glory. As far as I'm concerned, the atmosphere of the first half is superbly drawn, with each character down to the most minor one being well realised and the tensions and suspense at work almost being made tangible. For me, it is the second half of the book which has problems (albeit minor ones), in that I found the jumps in time and perspective jarring and the (otherwise fascinating) chapter about Robbie's adventures in France somewhat unreal. Of course, there are good reasons for the slightly unreal quality of the Dunkirk chapter (which the film captured just brilliantly), but still, it didn't quite work for me; it felt a bit out of place. Thankfully, though, the rest of the book worked just wonderfully for me. Like other McEwan books, it left me with a haunting question -- 'What if...?'

As for McEwan's impressive insight into the mind of a thirteen-year-old girl, which other reviewers have called scary, I think that has everything to do with Briony's being a writer. She is hardly your average thirteen-year-old (I think even McEwan would have a hard time coming up with one of those!); rather she is a writer (a good one), and that, of course, is something McEwan knows all about. As a fellow writer, I greatly enjoyed seeing the world through Briony's eyes, and hope her author will live to her old age and write as many good books as he has her doing.

]]> <![CDATA[All the Pretty Horses (The Border Trilogy, #1)]]> 469571 302 Cormac McCarthy 0679744398 Martine 1 4.04 1992 All the Pretty Horses (The Border Trilogy, #1)
author: Cormac McCarthy
name: Martine
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1992
rating: 1
read at:
date added: 2013/12/16
shelves: did-not-finish, film, north-american, modern-fiction, disappointing
review:
I seldom abandon books after reading just a couple of pages, but in this case I had no choice. Two pages into the book I was so annoyed by McCarthy's random use of apostrophes and near-total lack of commas that I felt I had better stop reading to prevent an aneurysm. I'm sure McCarthy is a great storyteller, but unless someone convinces me he has found a competent proof-reader who is not afraid to add some four thousand commas to each of his books, I'll never read another line he's written. I can only tolerate so many crimes against grammar and punctuation.
]]> <![CDATA[A Short History of Nearly Everything]]> 437143 687 Bill Bryson 0552997048 Martine 4 popular-science, non-fiction 4.25 2003 A Short History of Nearly Everything
author: Bill Bryson
name: Martine
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at: 2007/05/01
date added: 2013/12/09
shelves: popular-science, non-fiction
review:
I know virtually nothing about science, so it was with some trepidation that I began reading this introduction to life, the universe and everything, which deals with questions such as "How did the universe originate?" and "How much does planet Earth weigh?". I ended up enjoying the hell out of it, as Bryson's writing style is so witty and accessible that it frequently made me laugh out loud. He has a knack of telling you not just about major developments in the history of the universe, but also about the scientists who made the discoveries he describes, who were frequently larger-than-life characters leading very tragic lives. To be honest, I enjoyed the asides on the scientists more than the science itself, but that didn't stop me enjoying reading all the bits about the Big Bang, early life forms and quarks. It also gave me an understanding of how random and unpredictable life really is, and how little mutations can lead to massive changes. Impressive stuff.
]]> The Painted Veil 1823995
The Painted Veil is a beautifully written affirmation of the human capacity to grow, to change, and to forgive.]]> 224 W. Somerset Maugham 0749304308 Martine 4
Most authors would turn a melodramatic story like the above into a cliche-riddled soap opera in which husband and wife, out in the wilds, share some dramatic, eye-opening experiences and come to appreciate and love each other, after which the wife, having obtained her husband's forgiveness, dies a tearful death. For let's face it, who could resist a beautiful woman's death in such an exotic setting? To his credit, Maugham gives his readers a different ending, one in which Kitty is allowed to live and learn. Does she become a radically different person? Nope, she doesn't. Decades' worth of miseducation can't right a wrong like that. But she does gain a new insight into life in general and her life in particular, and tries to make amends for earlier wrongs. That's more than you expect from her at the beginning of the book, where she seems an entirely vapid and selfish being, another one of those horrid female characters Maugham drew so well.

Whether or not you enjoy The Painted Veil largely depends on your tolerance for melodrama, unlikeable characters and racism, all of which abound in the book. My own tolerance for such things is substantial (at least in books -- not so much in real life), so I didn't mind the book too much. On the contrary, I found myself engrossed in the psychological details of the story -- the love, the loathing, the fear, the longing, the weakness, the growing awareness, the sense that forgiveness and redemption may be just around the corner. I also found myself (not for the first time) admiring Maugham's prodigious talent for characterisation. All the characters in the book, from the protagonists to the bit players, are fascinating and well drawn. I was intrigued by Walter, the quiet scientist who may or may not intend to let a horrible disease waste away his wife. I would have liked the story to be told more from his point of view, but then again, that would have made him less mysterious, which probably would have ruined the effect. Like many readers, I didn't overly care for Kitty, but I found it interesting to follow her journey and meet the men in her life. As I said, Maugham is a master of characterisation, and in The Painted Veil he presents some very interesting men. Charlie, Kitty's vain lover, is a superb creation, as is Waddington, an officer Kitty and Walter meet in China, who teaches Kitty that it's all right to defy society's expectations every now and then. The story itself may not be Maugham's best (I much prefer Of Human Bondage), but it certainly features memorable characters, as well as a social message which I'm sure was much needed at the time of writing. I can't wait to see the film adaptation, which apparently is even better than the book...]]> 4.04 1925 The Painted Veil
author: W. Somerset Maugham
name: Martine
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1925
rating: 4
read at: 2009/02/01
date added: 2013/12/08
shelves: british, early-twentieth-century, film, modern-fiction, psychological-drama
review:
What do you do when you discover that the wife you love despite the fact that she is shallow as hell and obviously despises you is having an affair? For Walter Fane, a bacteriologist working in early-twentieth-century colonial Hong Kong, the choice is easy. Either he will divorce his wife, which will disgrace her and leave her destitute (she was never taught to work or be independent, having always been expected to make a brilliant marriage), or, as a penance, she will have to accompany him on a trip to Southern China, where he has volunteered to work as a doctor in a cholera-ridden area from which few people return alive. Unable to face poverty and social disgrace, Kitty assents to her husband's proposal, convinced that he is hoping the trip will kill her. But is he really?

Most authors would turn a melodramatic story like the above into a cliche-riddled soap opera in which husband and wife, out in the wilds, share some dramatic, eye-opening experiences and come to appreciate and love each other, after which the wife, having obtained her husband's forgiveness, dies a tearful death. For let's face it, who could resist a beautiful woman's death in such an exotic setting? To his credit, Maugham gives his readers a different ending, one in which Kitty is allowed to live and learn. Does she become a radically different person? Nope, she doesn't. Decades' worth of miseducation can't right a wrong like that. But she does gain a new insight into life in general and her life in particular, and tries to make amends for earlier wrongs. That's more than you expect from her at the beginning of the book, where she seems an entirely vapid and selfish being, another one of those horrid female characters Maugham drew so well.

Whether or not you enjoy The Painted Veil largely depends on your tolerance for melodrama, unlikeable characters and racism, all of which abound in the book. My own tolerance for such things is substantial (at least in books -- not so much in real life), so I didn't mind the book too much. On the contrary, I found myself engrossed in the psychological details of the story -- the love, the loathing, the fear, the longing, the weakness, the growing awareness, the sense that forgiveness and redemption may be just around the corner. I also found myself (not for the first time) admiring Maugham's prodigious talent for characterisation. All the characters in the book, from the protagonists to the bit players, are fascinating and well drawn. I was intrigued by Walter, the quiet scientist who may or may not intend to let a horrible disease waste away his wife. I would have liked the story to be told more from his point of view, but then again, that would have made him less mysterious, which probably would have ruined the effect. Like many readers, I didn't overly care for Kitty, but I found it interesting to follow her journey and meet the men in her life. As I said, Maugham is a master of characterisation, and in The Painted Veil he presents some very interesting men. Charlie, Kitty's vain lover, is a superb creation, as is Waddington, an officer Kitty and Walter meet in China, who teaches Kitty that it's all right to defy society's expectations every now and then. The story itself may not be Maugham's best (I much prefer Of Human Bondage), but it certainly features memorable characters, as well as a social message which I'm sure was much needed at the time of writing. I can't wait to see the film adaptation, which apparently is even better than the book...
]]> <![CDATA[A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush]]> 840331 256 Eric Newby 0330266233 Martine 5 A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush ranks among the funniest things I've ever read. On it, Newby quotes from a phrasebook of the Afghan Bashgali language, which apparently contains opening gambits like 'How long have you had a goitre?', 'I have nine fingers; you have ten', 'A dwarf has come to ask for food' and 'I have an intention to kill you', which made me laugh so hard I actually dropped my copy of the book. One day I hope to lay my hands on the phrasebook from which Newby quotes here. Which may prove hard, as it's over 100 years old and devilishly obscure.

While not as hilarious as the quotes listed above, the rest of A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush -- about the author's impromptu trip to Afghanistan's Nuristan region, one of the most inaccessible parts of the world -- is pretty damn entertaining, too. You see, the road from Kabul to Nuristan is rather mountainous, and the author and his companion aren't exactly experienced mountaineers. They are an haute couture salesman and a career diplomat, respectively, whose only serious climbing experience prior to setting off for Afghanistan is a two-day crash course in Wales. Needless to say, this leaves them woefully unprepared for the majesty of Mir Samir, a tall and windy peak they have vowed to climb. Their misadventures on the mountain, described in a witty, self-deprecating and quintessentially British style, make for interesting reading. So does the rest of their trip. The book gets off to a slow (albeit entertaining) start, but once the actual expedition gets under way, it gets better with every page. Newby is an excellent writer with a keen eye for character, beauty and absurd dialogue. His descriptions of the scenery and the eccentric characters they come across are superb, as are his underplayed but impressive tales of woe. And boy, do the author and his friend come to woe. Yet despite the setbacks they persevere, and in the end they're rewarded for their perseverance with a chance encounter with the great explorer Wilfred Thesiger, who kindly calls them a couple of pansies.

If I have any quibbles with the book, they concern the ending, which is rather abrupt and leaves a lot of questions unanswered. The rest of the book, however, is excellent, especially the second half. Highly recommended to armchair travellers and real explorers alike.]]> 3.85 1958 A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush
author: Eric Newby
name: Martine
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1958
rating: 5
read at: 2008/01/01
date added: 2013/12/08
shelves: travel-writing, non-fiction, british, favourites
review:
Page 166 of the Picador edition of A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush ranks among the funniest things I've ever read. On it, Newby quotes from a phrasebook of the Afghan Bashgali language, which apparently contains opening gambits like 'How long have you had a goitre?', 'I have nine fingers; you have ten', 'A dwarf has come to ask for food' and 'I have an intention to kill you', which made me laugh so hard I actually dropped my copy of the book. One day I hope to lay my hands on the phrasebook from which Newby quotes here. Which may prove hard, as it's over 100 years old and devilishly obscure.

While not as hilarious as the quotes listed above, the rest of A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush -- about the author's impromptu trip to Afghanistan's Nuristan region, one of the most inaccessible parts of the world -- is pretty damn entertaining, too. You see, the road from Kabul to Nuristan is rather mountainous, and the author and his companion aren't exactly experienced mountaineers. They are an haute couture salesman and a career diplomat, respectively, whose only serious climbing experience prior to setting off for Afghanistan is a two-day crash course in Wales. Needless to say, this leaves them woefully unprepared for the majesty of Mir Samir, a tall and windy peak they have vowed to climb. Their misadventures on the mountain, described in a witty, self-deprecating and quintessentially British style, make for interesting reading. So does the rest of their trip. The book gets off to a slow (albeit entertaining) start, but once the actual expedition gets under way, it gets better with every page. Newby is an excellent writer with a keen eye for character, beauty and absurd dialogue. His descriptions of the scenery and the eccentric characters they come across are superb, as are his underplayed but impressive tales of woe. And boy, do the author and his friend come to woe. Yet despite the setbacks they persevere, and in the end they're rewarded for their perseverance with a chance encounter with the great explorer Wilfred Thesiger, who kindly calls them a couple of pansies.

If I have any quibbles with the book, they concern the ending, which is rather abrupt and leaves a lot of questions unanswered. The rest of the book, however, is excellent, especially the second half. Highly recommended to armchair travellers and real explorers alike.
]]> Diary of a Genius 91746 Diary of a Genius stands as one of the seminal texts of Surrealism, revealing the most astonishing and intimate workings of the mind of Salvador Dalí, the eccentric polymath genius who became the living embodiment of Surrealism, the 20th century's most intensely subversive, disturbing and influential art movement.Dalí's second volume of autobiography, Diary ofa Genius covers his life from 1952 to 1963, during which years we learn of his amour fou for his wife Gala, and their relationship both at home in Cadaqués and during bizarre world travels. We also learn how Dalí draws inspiration from excrement, rotten fish and Vermeer's Lacemaker to enter his "rhinocerontic" period, preaching his post-holocaustal gospels of nuclear mysticism and cosmogenic atavism; and we follow the labyrinthine mental journeys that lead to the creation of such paintings as the Assumption, and his film script The Flesh Wheelbarrow.

This new expanded edition includes a brilliant and revelatory essay on Salvador Dalí, and the importance of his art to the 20th century, by the author J. G. Ballard.]]> 274 Salvador Dalí 0971457832 Martine 0 to-read 3.90 1964 Diary of a Genius
author: Salvador Dalí
name: Martine
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1964
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2013/05/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society]]> 4666058 291 Mary Ann Shaffer 0385341008 Martine 0 to-read 4.19 2008 The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
author: Mary Ann Shaffer
name: Martine
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2013/03/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Felix Salten's Bambi 857916 48 Janet Schulman 0689860749 Martine 0 to-read 4.05 1999 Felix Salten's Bambi
author: Janet Schulman
name: Martine
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1999
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2013/01/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Whistling Season 165434 Novelist Ivan Doig revisits the American west in the early twentieth century, bringing to life the eccentric individuals and idiosyncratic institutions that made it thrive.



“Can't cook but doesn't bite." So begins the newspaper ad offering the services of an "A-1 housekeeper, sound morals, exceptional disposition" that draws the attention of widower Oliver Milliron in the fall of 1909. That unforgettable season deposits the ever-whistling Rose Llewellyn and her font-of-knowledge brother, Morris Morgan, in Marias Coulee along with a stampede of homesteaders drawn by the promise of the Big Ditch—a gargantuan irrigation project intended to make the Montana prairie bloom. When the schoolmarm runs off with an itinerant preacher, Morris is pressed into service, setting the stage for the "several kinds of education"—none of them of the textbook variety—Morris and Rose will bring to Oliver, his three sons, and the rambunctious students in the region's one-room schoolhouse. A paean to a way of life that has long since vanished, The Whistling Season is Ivan Doig at his evocative best.]]> 345 Ivan Doig 0156031647 Martine 0 to-read 3.97 2006 The Whistling Season
author: Ivan Doig
name: Martine
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2012/10/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Well of Lost Plots (Thursday Next, #3)]]> 1117722 360 jasper-fforde 0340830611 Martine 3
Once again, Fforde's imagination knows no bounds. He pokes fun at everything from Verne, the Bronte sisters and Lewis Carroll to Microsoft and generic thrillers, and has a splendid time parodying bad fiction and good fiction alike. Sadly, however, he spends so much time world-building and losing himself in interesting ideas that the plot suffers. Very little actually happens in the first three fourths of the book; mostly it's an overly long description of life in the book world. The humour is a bit off, too -- while there are plenty of half-smiles, there are few genuine laughs, like the ones in the previous two books. Still, the book sets the stage for Book 4, and as such is a useful addition to the series.]]> 3.94 2003 The Well of Lost Plots (Thursday Next, #3)
author: jasper-fforde
name: Martine
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2003
rating: 3
read at: 2008/01/01
date added: 2012/08/24
shelves: british, humour, science-fiction, modern-fiction, postmodern
review:
In the third instalment of the series, real life becomes a bit too dangerous for Thursday, so she goes into hiding in the book world. And not just any part of the book world, but the Well of Lost Plots, where unpublished novels languish. Here, while the pernicious Aornis Hades tries to erase her memories, Thursday continues her training to become a Jurisfiction agent. Which is not as easy as it might sound, for characters are failing to show up for their Rage Control Meetings, murderous Minotaurs, verbivores, grammasites and mispeling vyruses are wreaking havoc, and if that weren't spectacular enough, the revolutionary new book-operating system UltraWord is about to be launched, which may not be such a good thing. In short, Thursday's dreams of an easy, tranquil pregnancy are quickly dashed, never to return.

Once again, Fforde's imagination knows no bounds. He pokes fun at everything from Verne, the Bronte sisters and Lewis Carroll to Microsoft and generic thrillers, and has a splendid time parodying bad fiction and good fiction alike. Sadly, however, he spends so much time world-building and losing himself in interesting ideas that the plot suffers. Very little actually happens in the first three fourths of the book; mostly it's an overly long description of life in the book world. The humour is a bit off, too -- while there are plenty of half-smiles, there are few genuine laughs, like the ones in the previous two books. Still, the book sets the stage for Book 4, and as such is a useful addition to the series.
]]> <![CDATA[The Crown Conspiracy (The Riyria Revelations, #1)]]> 4345290 They killed the king. They pinned it on two men. They chose poorly.

There is no ancient evil to defeat, no orphan destined for greatness, just two guys in the wrong place at the wrong time. Royce Melborn, a skilled thief, and his mercenary partner, Hadrian Blackwater make a profitable living carrying out dangerous assignments for conspiring nobles until they become the unwitting scapegoats in a plot to murder the king. Sentenced to death, they have only one way out...and so begins this tale of treachery and adventure, sword fighting and magic, myth and legend.]]> 296 Michael J. Sullivan 0980003431 Martine 0 to-read 4.21 2008 The Crown Conspiracy (The Riyria Revelations, #1)
author: Michael J. Sullivan
name: Martine
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2012/08/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Adam Bede 20563 The story of a beautiful country girl's seduction by the local squire and its bitter, tragic sequel is an old and familiar one which George Eliot invests with peculiar and haunting power.

A bestseller from the moment of publication, Adam Bede, although on one level a rich and loving re-creation of a small community shaken to its core, is more than a charming, faultlessly evoked pastoral. However much the reader may sympathize with Hetty Sorrel and identify with Arthur Donnithorne, her seducer, and with Adam Bede, the man Hetty betrays,it is George Eliots's creation of the distant aesthetic whole - the complex, multifarious life of Hayslope - which so grips the reader's imagination. As Stephen Gill comments: 'Reading the novel is a process of learning simultaneously about the world of Adam Bede and the world of Adam Bede.']]> 624 George Eliot 0375759018 Martine 0 to-read 3.81 1859 Adam Bede
author: George Eliot
name: Martine
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1859
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2012/08/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Complete Plays 23785
This stunning new translation presents the only truly complete edition of the playwright who is in the pantheon of the greatest dramatists in history. Anton Chekhov is a unique force in modern drama, his works interpreted and adapted internationally and beloved for their understanding of the human condition and their brilliant wit. This volume contains work that has never previously been translated, including the newly discovered farce The Power of Hypnosis and the first version of Ivanov , as well as Chekhov's early humorous dialogues. No less important, Laurence Senelick, who has staged many of these plays, has freshly translated them to bring into English Chekhov's jokes, the deliberate repetitions of his dialogue, and his verbal characterizations. Senelick has also annotated the works to bring clarity for the general reader and has included variants of the plays. His translations infuse new life into such classics as The Cherry Orchard and Three Sisters.]]> 992 Anton Chekhov 0393048853 Martine 0 to-read 4.45 2005 The Complete Plays
author: Anton Chekhov
name: Martine
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2012/03/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Black Monk 705902 90 Anton Chekhov 0146000366 Martine 4
'I was going out of my mind, I had megalomania, but I was bright and cheerful, even happy. I was interesting and original. Now I've grown more rational and stable, but I'm just like everyone else, a nobody. Life bores me... Oh, how cruelly you've treated me! I did have hallucinations, but did they harm anyone? Who did they harm, that's what I'd like to know!'

Personally, I love that kind of stuff when it fits into the story, but I can see how a less romantically inclined reader might roll his eyes and go, 'Yeah, you tell 'em, buddy. Right on.' Russian characters have that effect on some people.

Of course, Kovrin is not just any character. He's an academic on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Advised by a doctor to take a break, he travels to the Crimea to visit an old friend, but doesn't actually stop working. Soon he gets so overworked that he begins to see and have ardent discussions with a black monk others can't see. A gothic and somewhat haunting tale exploring the relationship between genius and insanity ensues. Both Kovrin and his friend Pesotsky are manic, but Pesotsky's mania takes a more socially acceptable form than Kovrin's. Chekhov (who had hallucinations about a black monk himself and, like his hero, died at a young age because he kept working while suffering from TB) leaves it up to his reader to decide which of the various kinds of madness depicted in the story is worse. With its expert characterisation and oppressive mood, 'The Black Monk' is a good story, intense and compelling and quintessentially Russian. It's Chekhov at his best, and Chekhov at his best will never get old.

The second story in the volume, 'Peasants', is equally grim but more realistic. It centres on a man who, suffering from bad health and no longer able to support his family, travels from Moscow to the countryside village where he grew up, only to find that his parents have too much on their minds to look after him and his family -- a hard-drinking son, a slutty daughter-in-law, taxes to pay, and so on. And of course the local council is to blame for everything, because it wouldn't do to blame the vodka, would it? 'Peasants' paints a bleak picture of a society torn asunder by poverty and alcoholism. It rings true, and probably was -- Chekhov was a dcctor, and as such met many poor people. I don't think it's Chekhov's best story, but it's very readable, albeit depressing. Then again, I don't think anyone reads Russian literature for the cheer it brings to people's lives.]]> 3.76 1894 The Black Monk
author: Anton Chekhov
name: Martine
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1894
rating: 4
read at: 2009/04/01
date added: 2012/02/08
shelves: continental-european, family-drama, nineteenth-century, russian, short-stories
review:
One of the things I like best about the great nineteenth-century Russian authors is how they can have their characters say outrageously grandiose things without making them sound ridiculous. Such are their characters' passions and romantic ideals that they get away with statements which in Western European or American literature would draw a guffaw from the reader. Take, for instance, this violent outburst by Andrei Kovrin, the schizophrenic hero of Chekhov's story 'The Black Monk':

'I was going out of my mind, I had megalomania, but I was bright and cheerful, even happy. I was interesting and original. Now I've grown more rational and stable, but I'm just like everyone else, a nobody. Life bores me... Oh, how cruelly you've treated me! I did have hallucinations, but did they harm anyone? Who did they harm, that's what I'd like to know!'

Personally, I love that kind of stuff when it fits into the story, but I can see how a less romantically inclined reader might roll his eyes and go, 'Yeah, you tell 'em, buddy. Right on.' Russian characters have that effect on some people.

Of course, Kovrin is not just any character. He's an academic on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Advised by a doctor to take a break, he travels to the Crimea to visit an old friend, but doesn't actually stop working. Soon he gets so overworked that he begins to see and have ardent discussions with a black monk others can't see. A gothic and somewhat haunting tale exploring the relationship between genius and insanity ensues. Both Kovrin and his friend Pesotsky are manic, but Pesotsky's mania takes a more socially acceptable form than Kovrin's. Chekhov (who had hallucinations about a black monk himself and, like his hero, died at a young age because he kept working while suffering from TB) leaves it up to his reader to decide which of the various kinds of madness depicted in the story is worse. With its expert characterisation and oppressive mood, 'The Black Monk' is a good story, intense and compelling and quintessentially Russian. It's Chekhov at his best, and Chekhov at his best will never get old.

The second story in the volume, 'Peasants', is equally grim but more realistic. It centres on a man who, suffering from bad health and no longer able to support his family, travels from Moscow to the countryside village where he grew up, only to find that his parents have too much on their minds to look after him and his family -- a hard-drinking son, a slutty daughter-in-law, taxes to pay, and so on. And of course the local council is to blame for everything, because it wouldn't do to blame the vodka, would it? 'Peasants' paints a bleak picture of a society torn asunder by poverty and alcoholism. It rings true, and probably was -- Chekhov was a dcctor, and as such met many poor people. I don't think it's Chekhov's best story, but it's very readable, albeit depressing. Then again, I don't think anyone reads Russian literature for the cheer it brings to people's lives.
]]> Aspects of the Novel 263341 From the Back Cover
The wit and lively, informed originality Forster employs in his study of the novel has made this book a classic. Deliberately avoiding the chronological development approach of what he classifies "pseudoscholarship," the author freely examines aspects all English-language novels have in common: story, people, plot, fantasy, prophecy, pattern, and rhythm. Forster's delightful treatment gives the reader a profound appreciation for both the novel and the author's own formidable talents.

"We discover under Forster's casual and wittily acute guidance, many things about the literary magic which transmutes the dull stuff of He-said and She-said into characters, stories, and intimations of truth." -- Jacques Barzun, Harper's Magazine

Mr. Forster's volume is more than a discussion of a literary form, it is a discussion of experience, of life, an admirable and delightful reflection of a mind that has recognized its own affinity with Erasmus and Montaigne. -- Theodore Spencer, New York Times Book Review

Amazon. com Review
There are all kinds of books out there purporting to explain that odd phenomenon the novel. Sometimes it's hard to know whom they're are for, exactly. Enthusiastic readers? Fellow academics? Would-be writers? Aspects of the Novel, E. M. Forster's 1927 treatise on the "fictitious prose work over 50,000 words" is, it turns out, for anyone with the faintest interest in how fiction is made. Open at random, and find your attention utterly sandbagged.

Forster's book is not really a book at all; rather, it's a collection of lectures delivered at Cambridge University on subjects as parboiled as "People," "The Plot," and "The Story." It has an unpretentious verbal immediacy thanks to its spoken origin and is written in the key of Apologetic Mumble: "Those who dislike Dickens have an excellent case. He ought to be bad." Such gentle provocations litter these pages. How can you not read on? Forster's critical writing is so ridiculously plainspoken, so happily commonsensical, that we often forget to be intimidated by the rhetorical landscapes he so ably leads us through. As he himself points out in the introductory note, "Since the novel is itself often colloquial it may possibly withhold some of its secrets from the graver and grander streams of criticism, and may reveal them to backwaters and shallows."

Forster's brand of humanism has fallen from fashion in literary studies, yet it endures in fiction itself. Readers still love this author, even if they come to him by way of the multiplex. The durability of his work is, of course, the greatest raison d'être this book could have. It should have been titled How to Write Novels People Will Still Read in a Hundred Years. -- Claire Dederer]]> 192 E.M. Forster 0156091801 Martine 0 to-read 3.83 1927 Aspects of the Novel
author: E.M. Forster
name: Martine
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1927
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/12/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> About Grace 553995 On a Caribbean island, destitute, alone, and unsure if his child has survived or his wife can forgive him, David is sheltered by a couple with a daughter of their own. Ultimately it is she who will pull him back into the world, to search for the people he left behind.

Doerr's characters are full of grief and longing, but also replete with grace. His compassion for human frailty is extraordinarily moving. In luminous prose, he writes about the power and beauty of nature and about the tiny miracles that transform our lives. About Grace is heartbreaking, radiant, and astonishingly accomplished.



When Anthony Doerr's The Shell Collector was published in 2002, the Los Angeles Times called his stories "as close to faultless as any writer—young or vastly experienced—could wish for." He won the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Discover Prize, Princeton's Hodder Fellowship, and two O. Henrys, and shared the Young Lions Award. Now he has written one of the most beautiful, wise, and compelling first novels of recent times.
]]> 402 Anthony Doerr 0143036165 Martine 0 to-read 3.39 2004 About Grace
author: Anthony Doerr
name: Martine
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/09/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Tigana 290645 673 Guy Gavriel Kay 0451451155 Martine 4
Tigana is the name of one of the countries of the Palm, a peninsula loosely based on Renaissance Italy. Divided and distrustful of one another, and unlikely ever to unite, the countries of the Palm are an easy prey for overseas invaders. When the story proper starts, two sorcerer-kings from abroad, Brandin of Ygrath and Alberico of Barbadior, have carved out the Palm between them, each ruling about half of the peninsula, each greedy for the other half. One of the sorcerers, Brandin, has destroyed the country of Tigana and cursed it so comprehensively that none but its older inhabitants remember its existence. The very name 'Tigana' cannot be written, spoken or heard, except by those Tiganans who were alive when the outrage that provoked Brandin's wrath occurred: the death of his son Stevan at the hands of Prince Valentin of Tigana, a noble man determined to protect his country from the mighty invader. Twenty years later, Valentin's son Alessan, along with a ragtag crew of similarly minded nobles, commoners and wizards, sets out to overthrow Brandin (preferably in a way which will not yield his land to his arch rival Alberico) and restore once-beautiful Tigana to its former glory. And that, in a nutshell, is what Tigana is all about.

Except, of course, that it is not all Tigana is about. A big and ambitious book, Tigana is about the things that make people tick, the things that keep them going when all their efforts seem futile. It's about loyalty, justice and politics, about how to be a good and inspiring leader in troubled times, and about how to orchestrate changes if you need them. It's about shared memories and how they bind people together, forging a shared identity. It's about nationalism and how to get people to unite behind a common ideal when being divided isn't working for them. It's about shame and despair and what they will drive us to. It's about all these things and more, and Kay effortlessly weaves them into a coherent story, which somehow manages to be both epic and startlingly intimate. It's a literary tour de force, and then some.

Needless to say, though, it's not just about ideas. Central to the book are two very human tales of two very extraordinary humans, Alessan and Dianora. The former is a charismatic leader who tries to look beyond the needs of his own country and work for the greater good of all the people of the Palm, only to be cursed by his proud mother for not focussing enough on poor Tigana and revenge. The latter is a beautiful girl whose family has been wrecked by Brandin and who sets out to kill him, only to fall deeply and devastatingly in love with him and actually save his life when someone else has a go at assassinating him, to her own amazement and mortification. The relationship between Dianora and Brandin has to be one of the most haunting ones I've come across in any type of fiction. There is real internal drama here, and genuine, heart-felt emotionality, and Kay expertly takes you through it all, from Dianora's early anger to her anguished acceptance of her own feelings for Brandin, revealing layer after layer of involvement until the heart-wrenching finale. It's riveting stuff, told by someone who really, really understands the conflicts of the human heart, and it just about broke my own heart.

The other characters are less thoroughly fleshed out than Alessan and Dianora, but they do make for an interesting mosaic of personalities and storylines. Due to the constant switches in perspective, some parts of the story have a somewhat jarring quality, but the fast pace and sheer balls of the story more than make up for this. Some plot turns are predictable and a little cheap, but Kay always puts in sufficient pathos to make them interesting. Other plot turns, like the unexpected twist which ends Brandin's storyline, are surprising and quite brilliantly handled. I actually found myself nodding with admiration at the conclusion to the book, something I hardly ever do. And as usual, I just loved Kay's characters, who are so driven that one can't help rooting for them. I don’t think I cared for Tigana's heroes quite as much as I did for The Lions of al-Rassan's, but I cared, and in Dianora's case my heart broke a little at the denouement of her story. I never expected her to live happily ever after (it was obvious that her storyline was headed for tragedy), but to see such promise wasted like that was, well, tragic. Genuinely tragic, as opposed to the overwrought sentimentality that passes for tragedy in many other fantasy novels.

Tragedy aside, the real genius of Tigana is, in my opinion, Kay's refusal to make his characters either completely good or completely bad. There are many shades of grey here. The hero of the story, Alessan, is a great guy who justifiably attracts many followers, but he is not without flaws. Nor is the main villain of the piece, Brandin, without redeeming qualities. One of the most surprising things about Tigana is how sorry you feel, towards the end, for Brandin, the powerful sorcerer who may have wrecked a country and an entire generation of people, but did so out of bottomless grief and love. He's a complex villain, is Brandin, and his inevitable demise at the end is not as satisfying as you might expect it to be because you have actually come to care for him a little. It takes a brave author to attempt a conflicted ending like this, but it makes for a rich and rewarding reading experience. If only more fantasy writers were prepared to write stories like this...

So why, after all that praise, am I withholding one star? Mostly because I feel the book could have done with better editing. There are sloppily written passages where the punctuation is a little off and where Kay randomly switches tenses, two things to which I'm quite allergic. Furthermore, Kay has a habit of breaking off the action mid-sentence only to continue it in the next paragraph for greater dramatic effect, which tends to annoy me. Finally, and most seriously, I feel Kay is frequently guilty of telling rather showing in Tigana, a flaw any good editor could and should have pointed out to him. However, these are minor quibbles. By and large, I loved the book, and I'd recommend it to any lover of good fantasy fiction. I quite look forward to continuing my acquaintance with Kay. I think I'll tackle A Song for Arbonne next...

]]> 4.16 1990 Tigana
author: Guy Gavriel Kay
name: Martine
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1990
rating: 4
read at: 2009/12/01
date added: 2011/08/04
shelves: fantasy, favourites, modern-fiction, north-american
review:
There was no way I was not going to love this book. Experience has shown that I love Guy Gavriel Kay and the characters he comes up with. They are, without exception, passionate people, and I love reading about passionate people, especially when they have a Cause. And boy, do the characters in this book have a cause. Can you say, epic cause?

Tigana is the name of one of the countries of the Palm, a peninsula loosely based on Renaissance Italy. Divided and distrustful of one another, and unlikely ever to unite, the countries of the Palm are an easy prey for overseas invaders. When the story proper starts, two sorcerer-kings from abroad, Brandin of Ygrath and Alberico of Barbadior, have carved out the Palm between them, each ruling about half of the peninsula, each greedy for the other half. One of the sorcerers, Brandin, has destroyed the country of Tigana and cursed it so comprehensively that none but its older inhabitants remember its existence. The very name 'Tigana' cannot be written, spoken or heard, except by those Tiganans who were alive when the outrage that provoked Brandin's wrath occurred: the death of his son Stevan at the hands of Prince Valentin of Tigana, a noble man determined to protect his country from the mighty invader. Twenty years later, Valentin's son Alessan, along with a ragtag crew of similarly minded nobles, commoners and wizards, sets out to overthrow Brandin (preferably in a way which will not yield his land to his arch rival Alberico) and restore once-beautiful Tigana to its former glory. And that, in a nutshell, is what Tigana is all about.

Except, of course, that it is not all Tigana is about. A big and ambitious book, Tigana is about the things that make people tick, the things that keep them going when all their efforts seem futile. It's about loyalty, justice and politics, about how to be a good and inspiring leader in troubled times, and about how to orchestrate changes if you need them. It's about shared memories and how they bind people together, forging a shared identity. It's about nationalism and how to get people to unite behind a common ideal when being divided isn't working for them. It's about shame and despair and what they will drive us to. It's about all these things and more, and Kay effortlessly weaves them into a coherent story, which somehow manages to be both epic and startlingly intimate. It's a literary tour de force, and then some.

Needless to say, though, it's not just about ideas. Central to the book are two very human tales of two very extraordinary humans, Alessan and Dianora. The former is a charismatic leader who tries to look beyond the needs of his own country and work for the greater good of all the people of the Palm, only to be cursed by his proud mother for not focussing enough on poor Tigana and revenge. The latter is a beautiful girl whose family has been wrecked by Brandin and who sets out to kill him, only to fall deeply and devastatingly in love with him and actually save his life when someone else has a go at assassinating him, to her own amazement and mortification. The relationship between Dianora and Brandin has to be one of the most haunting ones I've come across in any type of fiction. There is real internal drama here, and genuine, heart-felt emotionality, and Kay expertly takes you through it all, from Dianora's early anger to her anguished acceptance of her own feelings for Brandin, revealing layer after layer of involvement until the heart-wrenching finale. It's riveting stuff, told by someone who really, really understands the conflicts of the human heart, and it just about broke my own heart.

The other characters are less thoroughly fleshed out than Alessan and Dianora, but they do make for an interesting mosaic of personalities and storylines. Due to the constant switches in perspective, some parts of the story have a somewhat jarring quality, but the fast pace and sheer balls of the story more than make up for this. Some plot turns are predictable and a little cheap, but Kay always puts in sufficient pathos to make them interesting. Other plot turns, like the unexpected twist which ends Brandin's storyline, are surprising and quite brilliantly handled. I actually found myself nodding with admiration at the conclusion to the book, something I hardly ever do. And as usual, I just loved Kay's characters, who are so driven that one can't help rooting for them. I don’t think I cared for Tigana's heroes quite as much as I did for The Lions of al-Rassan's, but I cared, and in Dianora's case my heart broke a little at the denouement of her story. I never expected her to live happily ever after (it was obvious that her storyline was headed for tragedy), but to see such promise wasted like that was, well, tragic. Genuinely tragic, as opposed to the overwrought sentimentality that passes for tragedy in many other fantasy novels.

Tragedy aside, the real genius of Tigana is, in my opinion, Kay's refusal to make his characters either completely good or completely bad. There are many shades of grey here. The hero of the story, Alessan, is a great guy who justifiably attracts many followers, but he is not without flaws. Nor is the main villain of the piece, Brandin, without redeeming qualities. One of the most surprising things about Tigana is how sorry you feel, towards the end, for Brandin, the powerful sorcerer who may have wrecked a country and an entire generation of people, but did so out of bottomless grief and love. He's a complex villain, is Brandin, and his inevitable demise at the end is not as satisfying as you might expect it to be because you have actually come to care for him a little. It takes a brave author to attempt a conflicted ending like this, but it makes for a rich and rewarding reading experience. If only more fantasy writers were prepared to write stories like this...

So why, after all that praise, am I withholding one star? Mostly because I feel the book could have done with better editing. There are sloppily written passages where the punctuation is a little off and where Kay randomly switches tenses, two things to which I'm quite allergic. Furthermore, Kay has a habit of breaking off the action mid-sentence only to continue it in the next paragraph for greater dramatic effect, which tends to annoy me. Finally, and most seriously, I feel Kay is frequently guilty of telling rather showing in Tigana, a flaw any good editor could and should have pointed out to him. However, these are minor quibbles. By and large, I loved the book, and I'd recommend it to any lover of good fantasy fiction. I quite look forward to continuing my acquaintance with Kay. I think I'll tackle A Song for Arbonne next...


]]> The Man Without Qualities 527756 1774 Robert Musil 0330349422 Martine 0 to-read 4.20 1930 The Man Without Qualities
author: Robert Musil
name: Martine
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1930
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/08/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Kreutzer Sonata 987025 murderous

Pozdnyshev and his wife have a turbulent relationship. When her beauty blossoms after the birth of their children, men begin to flock around her and he becomes increasingly jealous. Convinced his wife is betraying him with a young musician, he is driven to ever more dangerous lengths by his overpowering suspicion.]]> 144 Leo Tolstoy 0141032847 Martine 0 to-read 3.66 1889 The Kreutzer Sonata
author: Leo Tolstoy
name: Martine
average rating: 3.66
book published: 1889
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/04/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Elizabeth the Queen 1244126 450 Alison Weir 0224044141 Martine 0 to-read 4.06 1998 Elizabeth the Queen
author: Alison Weir
name: Martine
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1998
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/03/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Sea of Fertility 171087 824 Yukio Mishima 0140069291 Martine 0 to-read 4.46 1970 The Sea of Fertility
author: Yukio Mishima
name: Martine
average rating: 4.46
book published: 1970
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/01/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land]]> 7159482 560 Thomas Asbridge 0743268601 Martine 0 to-read 4.28 2010 The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land
author: Thomas Asbridge
name: Martine
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/12/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Consolations of Philosophy]]> 23419 The Consolations of Philosophy takes the discipline of logic and the mind back to its roots. Drawing inspiration from six of the finest minds in history - Socrates, Epicurus, Seneca, Montaigne, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche - he addresses lack of money, the pain of love, inadequacy, anxiety and conformity. De Botton's book led one critic to call philosophy 'the new rock and roll'.]]> 265 Alain de Botton Martine 0 to-read 4.04 2000 The Consolations of Philosophy
author: Alain de Botton
name: Martine
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/09/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Status Anxiety 23425
Anyone who’s ever lost sleep over an unreturned phone call or the neighbor’s Lexus had better read Alain de Botton’s irresistibly clear-headed new book, immediately. For in its pages, a master explicator of our civilization and its discontents explores the notion that our pursuit of status is actually a pursuit of love, ranging through Western history and thought from St. Augustine to Andrew Carnegie and Machiavelli to Anthony Robbins.

Whether it’s assessing the class-consciousness of Christianity or the convulsions of consumer capitalism, dueling or home-furnishing, Status Anxiety is infallibly entertaining. And when it examines the virtues of informed misanthropy, art appreciation, or walking a lobster on a leash, it is not only wise but helpful.]]> 306 Alain de Botton 0375725350 Martine 0 to-read 3.89 2004 Status Anxiety
author: Alain de Botton
name: Martine
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/09/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Pilgrims 866613

When it appeared in 1997, Elizabeth Gilbert’s story collection, Pilgrims , immediately announced her compelling voice, her comic touch, and her amazing ear for dialogue. “The heroes of Pilgrims . . . are everyday seekers� ( Harper’s Bazaar )—brave and unforgettable, they are sure to strike a chord with fans old and new.]]> 210 Elizabeth Gilbert 0143113372 Martine 4 Pilgrims (first published in 1997) has come in for a fair bit of criticism on ŷ -- mainly, I think, because it is so different from her humongous bestseller Eat, Pray, Love. I get the impression many readers go into this collection of short stories expecting it to be a re-tread of themes discussed in Eat, Pray, Love, only to be fiercely disappointed and unforgiving when they find out it isn't. It's a pity many readers can't judge the book on its own merits, for Pilgrims is an accomplished collection of short stories. In my opinion, it showcases Elizabeth Gilbert's gifts as a writer better than does Eat, Pray, Love, but I guess it doesn't contain enough soul-searching and navel-gazing for the average fan of that book.

The twelve stories contained in Pilgrims are refreshingly diverse and unsentimental. They are set all over the USA, and feature a wide range of characters: directionless fifteen-year-old boys, brilliant and less brilliant magicians, brassy cowgirls, shy artists, incestuous bar owners, punch-happy protective older brothers, overambitious porters, pretentious students who like to pretend they're British aristocrats, and so on. The situations in which Gilbert puts these characters are equally diverse, but they do have a few things in common. For one thing, many stories revolve around characters learning important things about themselves, frequently finding things they did not even know they were looking for. For another thing, they all share a certain sympathy and compassion. No matter how silly or downright stupid some of Gilbert's characters are, the author never stoops to judge them, treating them instead with a tolerance that borders on respect. I like that, just like I like the fact that Gilbert never feels compelled to tell her characters' whole histories. The twelve stories in Pilgrims are not miniature novels; instead they are slices of life that start in medias res and end there. They capture a moment in time rather than a story, and as far as I'm concerned, they capture it well -- no need for more background or closure.

The best thing about Pilgrims is Elizabeth Gilbert's fabulous ear for dialogue. Readers familiar with Eat, Pray, Love will know that Gilbert excels at writing lively and witty dialogue. In Pilgrims she does an even better job of it, sketching complete (and again, very diverse) characters by means of short, frequently absurd exchanges. Many of her dialogues are quirky as hell, but they suit the characters and situations so well that they always feel genuine and right. As a beginning novelist, I quite envy Gilbert for the ease with which she gives all her characters a voice of their own, but I digress...

As I was saying, Pilgrims may not appeal to the millions of navel-gazing self-seekers who ate up Eat, Pray, Love , but those who like original and unsentimental slices of life with good characterisation and vivid dialogue should appreciate it a lot. I know I did!
]]> 3.18 1997 Pilgrims
author: Elizabeth Gilbert
name: Martine
average rating: 3.18
book published: 1997
rating: 4
read at: 2009/01/01
date added: 2010/09/07
shelves: books-i-translated, modern-fiction, north-american, short-stories
review:
Elizabeth Gilbert's Pilgrims (first published in 1997) has come in for a fair bit of criticism on ŷ -- mainly, I think, because it is so different from her humongous bestseller Eat, Pray, Love. I get the impression many readers go into this collection of short stories expecting it to be a re-tread of themes discussed in Eat, Pray, Love, only to be fiercely disappointed and unforgiving when they find out it isn't. It's a pity many readers can't judge the book on its own merits, for Pilgrims is an accomplished collection of short stories. In my opinion, it showcases Elizabeth Gilbert's gifts as a writer better than does Eat, Pray, Love, but I guess it doesn't contain enough soul-searching and navel-gazing for the average fan of that book.

The twelve stories contained in Pilgrims are refreshingly diverse and unsentimental. They are set all over the USA, and feature a wide range of characters: directionless fifteen-year-old boys, brilliant and less brilliant magicians, brassy cowgirls, shy artists, incestuous bar owners, punch-happy protective older brothers, overambitious porters, pretentious students who like to pretend they're British aristocrats, and so on. The situations in which Gilbert puts these characters are equally diverse, but they do have a few things in common. For one thing, many stories revolve around characters learning important things about themselves, frequently finding things they did not even know they were looking for. For another thing, they all share a certain sympathy and compassion. No matter how silly or downright stupid some of Gilbert's characters are, the author never stoops to judge them, treating them instead with a tolerance that borders on respect. I like that, just like I like the fact that Gilbert never feels compelled to tell her characters' whole histories. The twelve stories in Pilgrims are not miniature novels; instead they are slices of life that start in medias res and end there. They capture a moment in time rather than a story, and as far as I'm concerned, they capture it well -- no need for more background or closure.

The best thing about Pilgrims is Elizabeth Gilbert's fabulous ear for dialogue. Readers familiar with Eat, Pray, Love will know that Gilbert excels at writing lively and witty dialogue. In Pilgrims she does an even better job of it, sketching complete (and again, very diverse) characters by means of short, frequently absurd exchanges. Many of her dialogues are quirky as hell, but they suit the characters and situations so well that they always feel genuine and right. As a beginning novelist, I quite envy Gilbert for the ease with which she gives all her characters a voice of their own, but I digress...

As I was saying, Pilgrims may not appeal to the millions of navel-gazing self-seekers who ate up Eat, Pray, Love , but those who like original and unsentimental slices of life with good characterisation and vivid dialogue should appreciate it a lot. I know I did!

]]> The Complete Persepolis 991197
Persepolis is the story of Satrapi's unforgettable childhood and coming of age within a large and loving family in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution; of the contradictions between private and public life in a country plagued by political upheaval; of her high school years in Vienna facing the trials of adolescence far from her family; of her homecoming—both sweet and terrible; and, finally, of her self-imposed exile from her beloved homeland. It is the chronicle of a girlhood and adolescence at once outrageous and familiar, a young life entwined with the history of her country yet filled with the universal trials and joys of growing up.

Edgy, searingly observant, and candid, often heartbreaking but threaded throughout with raw humor and hard-earned wisdom�Persepolis is a stunning work from one of the most highly regarded, singularly talented graphic artists at work today.]]> 341 Marjane Satrapi 0375714839 Martine 0 to-read 4.38 2007 The Complete Persepolis
author: Marjane Satrapi
name: Martine
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/06/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Foucault’s Pendulum 17841
On a lark, the editors begin randomly feeding esoteric bits of knowledge into an incredible computer capable of inventing connections between all their entries. What they believe they are creating is a long, lazy game - until the game starts taking over...

Here is an incredible journey of thought and history, memory and fantasy, a tour de force as enthralling as anything Umberto Eco—or indeed anyone—has ever devised.]]> 623 Umberto Eco 015603297X Martine 0 to-read 3.92 1988 Foucault’s Pendulum
author: Umberto Eco
name: Martine
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1988
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/03/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Doll's House 37793

A Doll's House (1879), is a masterpiece of theatrical craft which, for the first time portrayed the tragic hypocrisy of Victorian middle class marriage on the stage. The play ushered in a new social era and "exploded like a bomb into contemporary life".

The Student Edition contains these exclusive features:

· A chronology of the playwright's life and work

· An introduction giving the background of the play

· Commentary on themes, characters. language and style

· Notes on individual words and phrases in the text

· Questions for further study

· Bibliography for further reading.

]]> 122 Henrik Ibsen 1406914835 Martine 0 to-read 3.76 1879 A Doll's House
author: Henrik Ibsen
name: Martine
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1879
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/02/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[All Quiet on the Western Front]]> 846136 This is an alternative cover edition for ISBN 9780099532811

One by one the boys begin to fall...

In 1914 a room full of German schoolboys, fresh-faced and idealistic, are goaded by their schoolmaster to troop off to the 'glorious war'. With the fire and patriotism of youth they sign up. What follows is the moving story of a young 'unknown soldier' experiencing the horror and disillusionment of life in the trenches.]]> 208 Erich Maria Remarque Martine 5 All Quiet on the Western Front (or, to give it its German title, Nothing New in the West) has been hailed as the best war novel ever, and it's easy to see why. World War I is described in such vivid non-glory in its pages that you are sucked into the story straight away and stay there for the next two hundred pages. It is obvious that the author, Erich Maria Remarque, had first-hand experience of the things he writes about; the details are so right and authentic-sounding that they couldn't possibly have been wholly made up. Needless to say, the ring of authenticity adds quite a punch to the reading experience, elevating a good war story into an absolute classic of the genre.

All Quiet is a short book, but remarkably complete. All the aspects of trench warfare are there -- the excitement, the tedium, the horror, the pain, the fear, the hunger, the dirt, the loss, the sense of alienation, the awareness that you may die any minute, and last but not least, the realisation of the futility of it all. All Quiet has a pervasive sense of futility, an initially unvoiced but later fully expressed question of 'Just what is this war all about, and why am I putting my life on the line for it? What could be worth such a sacrifice?' The answer is, obviously, nothing, because if this book has one message, it is that war is awful and young men ought not to be forced to fight them. This is not a book which glorifies the war effort, or portrays soldiers as heroes. It is not a book which tries to justify Germany's involvement in World War I. In Remarque's own words, it is 'an attempt to give an account of a generation that was destroyed by the war -- even those of it who survived the shelling'. As such, it is brutal and confronting, but in the best possible way. Anti-war fiction has seldom been this effective, or this memorable for that matter.

All Quiet tells the story of Paul Bäumer, a young man who gets talked by an idealistic teacher into joining the German army fighting World War I in Belgium. In short, business-like sentences, Paul tells the reader about his experiences in and around the trenches, plus those of his similarly duped classmates, all of whom end up dead. All Quiet does a brilliant job of evoking the strain of being at the front, providing vivid descriptions of the horrors of night-time shelling, being caught in no man's land, the smell of gangrene in the hospital, etc. Reading the book, you get a good feel for what it must have been like to be a soldier in World War I. Remarque does not spare his reader. He not only tells you what it's like to hide from the shells that are coming your way, but also what it feels like to crawl through a recently dug cemetery where shells have just exposed some body parts, and what it's like to crawl deeper and deeper beneath a coffin so that it will protect you, 'even if Death himself is already in it'. He tells you what it's like to hear friendly voices after having been stuck in no man's land for what seems like an eternity, and what it's like to have an unscratchable itch because there are lice underneath your plaster cast. He tells you what it's like to stare longingly at the picture of a squeaky clean pretty girl when you're absolutely filthy yourself and crawling with lice. He tells you why you need coarse and black humour to deal with the horrors of war, and why you need girls, or at least fantasies about girls. He also tells you what it's like to talk to the parents of a soldier who has died a horrible death. And last but not least, he shows you the aftermath. All Quiet on the Western Front demonstrates quite unequivocally how scarred the soldiers emerged from the trenches, because, as one of Paul's classmates says halfway through the book, 'Two years of rifle fire and hand-grenades -- you can't just take it all off like a pair of socks afterwards.' It shows how alienated the veterans of trench warfare felt from those at home, who could not for the life of them understand what it was like to experience the things they were going through. I guess this was the most powerful part of the book for me -- the part where Paul goes home and finds that he cannot communicate with his family, that he cannot possibly share the horrors of his recent experiences with his loved ones, because (1) they wouldn't understand, and (2) he does not want to upset them any more than their concerns for his well-being have already done. With chilling accuracy, Paul describes how empty his war experiences have made him feel. War, he says, brutalises soldiers, turning them into human animals, to the point where they have nothing to live for, as their former interests, dreams, tenderness and the future have all 'collapsed in the shelling, the despair and the army brothels'. His sense of desolation and isolation is so exquisitely rendered that by the time his leave is over and he has to return to the front, you find yourself agreeing with his classmate Albert: 'The war has ruined us for everything.'

As you can probably tell from the above, I had a strong reaction to All Quiet on the Western Front. From the sparse but effective prose to the expert way in which Remarque builds up the final two deaths, I just loved the book, responding to it unreservedly, jotting down astute observations and sharing passages from it with my boyfriend, who is a World War I buff. I felt like I was experiencing the boys' emotions with them, the good ones as well as the bad ones. I was shocked, horrified and repulsed when Remarque wanted me to be, but also got a few chuckles out of the book, because all the bad stuff really makes the good moments the boys experience stand out. I loved the male camaraderie which occasionally drips off the pages. I loved the descriptions of the little acts of vengeance the boys enact on those who have wronged them, as well as the few moments of genuine happiness they experience at the front, such as when they eat a stolen goose, raid an officers' supply depot or make their way to some girls they are not supposed to visit. These events are drawn so vividly and have such a genuine feel of relief and excitement about them that it's hard not to get drawn in. Mostly, though, I just sympathised with the boys, asking with them why war is necessary, and whether those who wage wars on others have any idea what they're doing to the men who fight the wars for them. I think All Quiet on the Western Front should be compulsory reading for every leader who has ever considered going to war. The fact that the book is eighty years old and deals with events which took place nearly a century ago does not make its message any less valid today.

A note on the Vintage English translation: Brian Murdoch's translation is good but a bit sloppy at times, especially in the second half of the book, where he occasionally uses German-sounding grammar and makes a few typos. It also sounds a bit too British for my taste, to the point where I occasionally had to remind myself that I was reading about German soldiers, as they all sounded so terribly English! I would have preferred a slightly less 'placeable' translation, but really, that's a minor complaint. By and large, Murdoch did a good job. Next time round, though, I think I'll read the book in the original German.]]> 4.43 1928 All Quiet on the Western Front
author: Erich Maria Remarque
name: Martine
average rating: 4.43
book published: 1928
rating: 5
read at: 2009/09/01
date added: 2010/02/14
shelves: continental-european, early-twentieth-century, favourites, film, historical-fiction, modern-fiction, war
review:
All Quiet on the Western Front (or, to give it its German title, Nothing New in the West) has been hailed as the best war novel ever, and it's easy to see why. World War I is described in such vivid non-glory in its pages that you are sucked into the story straight away and stay there for the next two hundred pages. It is obvious that the author, Erich Maria Remarque, had first-hand experience of the things he writes about; the details are so right and authentic-sounding that they couldn't possibly have been wholly made up. Needless to say, the ring of authenticity adds quite a punch to the reading experience, elevating a good war story into an absolute classic of the genre.

All Quiet is a short book, but remarkably complete. All the aspects of trench warfare are there -- the excitement, the tedium, the horror, the pain, the fear, the hunger, the dirt, the loss, the sense of alienation, the awareness that you may die any minute, and last but not least, the realisation of the futility of it all. All Quiet has a pervasive sense of futility, an initially unvoiced but later fully expressed question of 'Just what is this war all about, and why am I putting my life on the line for it? What could be worth such a sacrifice?' The answer is, obviously, nothing, because if this book has one message, it is that war is awful and young men ought not to be forced to fight them. This is not a book which glorifies the war effort, or portrays soldiers as heroes. It is not a book which tries to justify Germany's involvement in World War I. In Remarque's own words, it is 'an attempt to give an account of a generation that was destroyed by the war -- even those of it who survived the shelling'. As such, it is brutal and confronting, but in the best possible way. Anti-war fiction has seldom been this effective, or this memorable for that matter.

All Quiet tells the story of Paul Bäumer, a young man who gets talked by an idealistic teacher into joining the German army fighting World War I in Belgium. In short, business-like sentences, Paul tells the reader about his experiences in and around the trenches, plus those of his similarly duped classmates, all of whom end up dead. All Quiet does a brilliant job of evoking the strain of being at the front, providing vivid descriptions of the horrors of night-time shelling, being caught in no man's land, the smell of gangrene in the hospital, etc. Reading the book, you get a good feel for what it must have been like to be a soldier in World War I. Remarque does not spare his reader. He not only tells you what it's like to hide from the shells that are coming your way, but also what it feels like to crawl through a recently dug cemetery where shells have just exposed some body parts, and what it's like to crawl deeper and deeper beneath a coffin so that it will protect you, 'even if Death himself is already in it'. He tells you what it's like to hear friendly voices after having been stuck in no man's land for what seems like an eternity, and what it's like to have an unscratchable itch because there are lice underneath your plaster cast. He tells you what it's like to stare longingly at the picture of a squeaky clean pretty girl when you're absolutely filthy yourself and crawling with lice. He tells you why you need coarse and black humour to deal with the horrors of war, and why you need girls, or at least fantasies about girls. He also tells you what it's like to talk to the parents of a soldier who has died a horrible death. And last but not least, he shows you the aftermath. All Quiet on the Western Front demonstrates quite unequivocally how scarred the soldiers emerged from the trenches, because, as one of Paul's classmates says halfway through the book, 'Two years of rifle fire and hand-grenades -- you can't just take it all off like a pair of socks afterwards.' It shows how alienated the veterans of trench warfare felt from those at home, who could not for the life of them understand what it was like to experience the things they were going through. I guess this was the most powerful part of the book for me -- the part where Paul goes home and finds that he cannot communicate with his family, that he cannot possibly share the horrors of his recent experiences with his loved ones, because (1) they wouldn't understand, and (2) he does not want to upset them any more than their concerns for his well-being have already done. With chilling accuracy, Paul describes how empty his war experiences have made him feel. War, he says, brutalises soldiers, turning them into human animals, to the point where they have nothing to live for, as their former interests, dreams, tenderness and the future have all 'collapsed in the shelling, the despair and the army brothels'. His sense of desolation and isolation is so exquisitely rendered that by the time his leave is over and he has to return to the front, you find yourself agreeing with his classmate Albert: 'The war has ruined us for everything.'

As you can probably tell from the above, I had a strong reaction to All Quiet on the Western Front. From the sparse but effective prose to the expert way in which Remarque builds up the final two deaths, I just loved the book, responding to it unreservedly, jotting down astute observations and sharing passages from it with my boyfriend, who is a World War I buff. I felt like I was experiencing the boys' emotions with them, the good ones as well as the bad ones. I was shocked, horrified and repulsed when Remarque wanted me to be, but also got a few chuckles out of the book, because all the bad stuff really makes the good moments the boys experience stand out. I loved the male camaraderie which occasionally drips off the pages. I loved the descriptions of the little acts of vengeance the boys enact on those who have wronged them, as well as the few moments of genuine happiness they experience at the front, such as when they eat a stolen goose, raid an officers' supply depot or make their way to some girls they are not supposed to visit. These events are drawn so vividly and have such a genuine feel of relief and excitement about them that it's hard not to get drawn in. Mostly, though, I just sympathised with the boys, asking with them why war is necessary, and whether those who wage wars on others have any idea what they're doing to the men who fight the wars for them. I think All Quiet on the Western Front should be compulsory reading for every leader who has ever considered going to war. The fact that the book is eighty years old and deals with events which took place nearly a century ago does not make its message any less valid today.

A note on the Vintage English translation: Brian Murdoch's translation is good but a bit sloppy at times, especially in the second half of the book, where he occasionally uses German-sounding grammar and makes a few typos. It also sounds a bit too British for my taste, to the point where I occasionally had to remind myself that I was reading about German soldiers, as they all sounded so terribly English! I would have preferred a slightly less 'placeable' translation, but really, that's a minor complaint. By and large, Murdoch did a good job. Next time round, though, I think I'll read the book in the original German.
]]> <![CDATA[The Chronicles of Chrestomanci, Volume 2 (Chrestomanci, #3-4)]]> 34290
In two worlds the practice of magic has gone dangerously awry, there is only one solution -- call upon the Chrestomanci.]]> 548 Diana Wynne Jones Martine 4
The first book in the volume, The Magicians of Caprona, is set in a world reminiscent of Renaissance Italy. It's basically Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet), except with added magic. As Diana Wynne Jones tells the tale, two wizarding families are responsible for the spells that keep the city of Caprona flourishing: the Montanas and the Petrocchis, who have been feuding for generations and seem unlikely ever to patch things up. When the city's spells start weakening, it looks like Caprona may be usurped by other cities. Obviously something is very wrong, but who is causing the mischief? Is it the Montanas, the Petrocchis, or is there a third party involved? Montana and Petrocchi children start investigating the matter, saving Caprona from perdition and unifying their houses in the process. Well, what did you expect?

The second book, Witch Week, is set in a completely different milieu: a boarding school in a modern England which is remarkably like ours, except that magic of any kind is strictly forbidden and witches are burnt at the stake. One day, a teacher finds a note advising him there is a witch in his class. This leads to a genuine witch hunt in which several pupils who might be witches (but aren't sure themselves) are accused of witchcraft by nasty classmates. The accused try to save their hides by hiding, pretending they're completely normal or pointing their fingers at others. And then rumours start spreading that the Inquisition is about to pay a visit to the school, bringing equipment with them which will surely help them find the witch, and suddenly a whole lot of people seem to get very nervous. Could it be that there's more than one witch at the school? And if so, what are they going to do when the Inquisition shows up?

This second volume of Chrestomanci stories (there is a third one, too, but I haven't read that yet) is less impressive than the first one, but still compulsively readable. The first story is charming but predictable -- a three-star affair with some good characterisation and amusing set pieces but little genuine development. Adult readers will spot the plot twists a mile off, and the fact that Chrestomanci's cameo is completely bland doesn't help, either. The second story, however, is very strong -- worth a full five stars for its great and ever so recognisable depiction of an adolescent witch hunt and adolescence in general. Apart from the very real possibility that they'll die at the stake, the protagonists of Witch Week are teenagers like people we've known and may well have been ourselves. They are intelligent but unpopular kids who are bullied by popular cliques and alternate between trying to avoid trouble and plotting subtle revenge on those who have caused them harm. The tone of the story is pleasantly rebellious and anarchic, and it's well crafted, keeping you guessing at the witches' identities and crossing your fingers for the underdogs until the very end. Chrestomanci makes an appearance in this story, as well, and it's considerably more fun than the one in The Magicians of Caprona.

In short, Volume II of the Chronicles of Chrestomanci is a solid addition to the series -- not as original as Volume I, but definitely worth checking out if you like Harry Potter-style fantasy. Just read Volume I first to get a feel for the world in which the stories are set and Chrestomanci's role in it...
]]> 4.21 1982 The Chronicles of Chrestomanci, Volume 2 (Chrestomanci, #3-4)
author: Diana Wynne Jones
name: Martine
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1982
rating: 4
read at: 2008/06/01
date added: 2010/01/27
shelves: british, children-s-lit, fantasy, modern-fiction
review:
The second Chrestomanci volume features two novels which have only two things in common: they both feature magic, and Chrestomanci shows up in both of them. However, the great wizard only makes brief appearances in the book, leaving centre stage to child protagonists who save society from an awful lot of harm by a combination of courage, brains, imagination and magic.

The first book in the volume, The Magicians of Caprona, is set in a world reminiscent of Renaissance Italy. It's basically Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet), except with added magic. As Diana Wynne Jones tells the tale, two wizarding families are responsible for the spells that keep the city of Caprona flourishing: the Montanas and the Petrocchis, who have been feuding for generations and seem unlikely ever to patch things up. When the city's spells start weakening, it looks like Caprona may be usurped by other cities. Obviously something is very wrong, but who is causing the mischief? Is it the Montanas, the Petrocchis, or is there a third party involved? Montana and Petrocchi children start investigating the matter, saving Caprona from perdition and unifying their houses in the process. Well, what did you expect?

The second book, Witch Week, is set in a completely different milieu: a boarding school in a modern England which is remarkably like ours, except that magic of any kind is strictly forbidden and witches are burnt at the stake. One day, a teacher finds a note advising him there is a witch in his class. This leads to a genuine witch hunt in which several pupils who might be witches (but aren't sure themselves) are accused of witchcraft by nasty classmates. The accused try to save their hides by hiding, pretending they're completely normal or pointing their fingers at others. And then rumours start spreading that the Inquisition is about to pay a visit to the school, bringing equipment with them which will surely help them find the witch, and suddenly a whole lot of people seem to get very nervous. Could it be that there's more than one witch at the school? And if so, what are they going to do when the Inquisition shows up?

This second volume of Chrestomanci stories (there is a third one, too, but I haven't read that yet) is less impressive than the first one, but still compulsively readable. The first story is charming but predictable -- a three-star affair with some good characterisation and amusing set pieces but little genuine development. Adult readers will spot the plot twists a mile off, and the fact that Chrestomanci's cameo is completely bland doesn't help, either. The second story, however, is very strong -- worth a full five stars for its great and ever so recognisable depiction of an adolescent witch hunt and adolescence in general. Apart from the very real possibility that they'll die at the stake, the protagonists of Witch Week are teenagers like people we've known and may well have been ourselves. They are intelligent but unpopular kids who are bullied by popular cliques and alternate between trying to avoid trouble and plotting subtle revenge on those who have caused them harm. The tone of the story is pleasantly rebellious and anarchic, and it's well crafted, keeping you guessing at the witches' identities and crossing your fingers for the underdogs until the very end. Chrestomanci makes an appearance in this story, as well, and it's considerably more fun than the one in The Magicians of Caprona.

In short, Volume II of the Chronicles of Chrestomanci is a solid addition to the series -- not as original as Volume I, but definitely worth checking out if you like Harry Potter-style fantasy. Just read Volume I first to get a feel for the world in which the stories are set and Chrestomanci's role in it...

]]> <![CDATA[The Regeneration Trilogy (Regeneration, #1-3)]]> 5877 608 Pat Barker 0670869295 Martine 4 4.42 1996 The Regeneration Trilogy (Regeneration, #1-3)
author: Pat Barker
name: Martine
average rating: 4.42
book published: 1996
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2010/01/22
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire]]> 2946024 392 Judith Herrin 0141031026 Martine 0 currently-reading 3.80 2007 Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire
author: Judith Herrin
name: Martine
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/01/20
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Ghost Road (Regeneration, #3)]]> 151926
The Ghost Road is the culminating masterpiece of Pat Barker's towering World War I fiction trilogy. The time of the novel is the closing months of the most senselessly savage of modern conflicts. In France, millions of men engaged in brutal trench warfare are all "ghosts in the making." In England, psychologist William Rivers, with severe pangs of conscience, treats the mental casualties of the war to make them whole enough to fight again. One of these, Billy Prior, risen to the officer class from the working class, both courageous and sardonic, decides to return to France with his fellow officer, poet Wilfred Owen, to fight a war he no longer believes in. Meanwhile, Rivers, enfevered by influenza, returns in memory to his experience studying a South Pacific tribe whose ethos amounted to a culture of death. Across the gulf between his society and theirs, Rivers begins to form connections that cast new light on his--and our--understanding of war.

Combining poetic intensity with gritty realism, blending biting humor with tragic drama, moving toward a denouement as inevitable as it is devastating, The Ghost Road both encapsulates history and transcends it. It is a modern masterpiece
]]> 288 Pat Barker 0452276721 Martine 3
I'm not sure why The Ghost Road rather than Regeneration or The Eye in the Door won the Booker Prize. I can only assume the Booker judges wanted to honour the trilogy somehow and so picked the last book to show their appreciation, much like the Academy showered The Return of the King with Oscars even though The Fellowship of the Ring was a vastly superior film. Personally, I thought The Ghost Road was the weakest of the three books (rated a mere 3.5 stars, as opposed to the 4 and 4.5 stars I gave the other two books), but it didn't mar my overall impression of the trilogy, which is good.

A review of the entire trilogy is forthcoming.

]]> 4.10 1995 The Ghost Road (Regeneration, #3)
author: Pat Barker
name: Martine
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1995
rating: 3
read at: 2010/01/01
date added: 2010/01/20
shelves: british, glbt, historical-fiction, modern-fiction, psychological-drama, war
review:
The final instalment in the Regeneration Trilogy struck me as a bit unfocused and heavy-handed in its use of symbolism and parallel storylines. However, certain scenes were very powerful, and the ending packed a punch.

I'm not sure why The Ghost Road rather than Regeneration or The Eye in the Door won the Booker Prize. I can only assume the Booker judges wanted to honour the trilogy somehow and so picked the last book to show their appreciation, much like the Academy showered The Return of the King with Oscars even though The Fellowship of the Ring was a vastly superior film. Personally, I thought The Ghost Road was the weakest of the three books (rated a mere 3.5 stars, as opposed to the 4 and 4.5 stars I gave the other two books), but it didn't mar my overall impression of the trilogy, which is good.

A review of the entire trilogy is forthcoming.


]]> <![CDATA[The Man Who Loved China: The Fantastic Story of the Eccentric Scientist Who Unlocked the Mysteries of the Middle Kingdom]]> 2763494 The Professor & the Madman ("Elegant & scrupulous"�NY Times Book Review) & Krakatoa ("A mesmerizing page-turner"�Time) tells the story of Joseph Needham, the Cambridge scientist who unlocked the most closely held secrets of China, long the world's most technologically advanced country.

No cloistered don, this tall, married Englishman was a freethinking intellectual. A nudist, he was devoted to quirky folk dancing. In 1937, while working as a biochemist at Cambridge, he fell in love with a visiting Chinese student, with whom he began a lifelong affair. His mistress persuaded him to travel to her home country, where he embarked on a series of expeditions to the frontiers of the ancient empire. He searched for evidence to bolster a conviction that the Chinese were responsible for hundreds of humankind's most familiar innovations—including printing, the compass, explosives, suspension bridges, even toilet paper—often centuries before others. His journeys took him across war-torn China, consolidating his admiration for the Chinese. After the war, he determined to announce what he'd discovered & began writing Science & Civilization in China, describing the country's long history of invention & technology. By the time he died, he'd produced, almost single-handedly, 17 volumes, making him the greatest one-man encyclopedist ever.

Epic & intimate, The Man Who Loved China tells the sweeping story of China thru Needham's life. Here's a tale of what makes men, nations & humankind great—related by one of the world's best storytellers.]]> 316 Simon Winchester 0060884592 Martine 0 to-read 3.82 2008 The Man Who Loved China: The Fantastic Story of the Eccentric Scientist Who Unlocked the Mysteries of the Middle Kingdom
author: Simon Winchester
name: Martine
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/01/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Eye in the Door (Regeneration, #2)]]> 151928 280 Pat Barker Martine 4 4.03 1993 The Eye in the Door (Regeneration, #2)
author: Pat Barker
name: Martine
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1993
rating: 4
read at: 2010/01/01
date added: 2010/01/13
shelves: british, historical-fiction, modern-fiction, psychological-drama, war, glbt
review:
The second book of Pat Barker's Regeneration Trilogy is every bit as good as the first one, and probably better. While I'm not sure how I feel about the split personality thing, I loved the psychological drama and the period detail. Some fascinating stuff there. I'll post a proper review once I've finished the trilogy.
]]> The Translator 107830 295 John Crowley 0380815370 Martine 0 to-read 3.77 2002 The Translator
author: John Crowley
name: Martine
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2002
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/01/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Aristoi 837188 448 Walter Jon Williams 0812514092 Martine 0 to-read 4.00 1992 Aristoi
author: Walter Jon Williams
name: Martine
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1992
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/01/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Book of Atrix Wolfe 77353 250 Patricia A. McKillip 0441003613 Martine 0 to-read 3.98 1995 The Book of Atrix Wolfe
author: Patricia A. McKillip
name: Martine
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/01/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Travels with Herodotus 2494270 Travels with Herodotus depicts his beginnings as an inexperienced young Polish journalist and reveals what drove him throughout his extraordinary life. At every encounter with a new culture - whether Indian, Chinese or African - he plunges in, curious and observant, thirsting to understand its history and its people. Everywhere and always, he has with him his travelling companion, The Histories by Herodotus. Here in his final book the thoughts of Kapuściński and Herodotus, though separated by twenty-five centuries, are intertwined to produce a unique work of reportage and insight.]]> 275 Ryszard Kapuściński 0141021144 Martine 3 Travels with Herodotus, an attempt to mix modern literary reportage with the writings of one of the greatest travelling reporters of all time, Herodotus. Sadly, however, the book was a bit of letdown. The old and new stuff didn't blend well, so the final result, while occasionally poignant and insightful, was a little underwhelming.

Maybe I went in with the wrong expectations. When I bought the book, I was expecting it to be something like , a frightfully erudite book with quotes so absurd that they frequently made me howl with laughter (in public, which was rather embarrassing). Travels with a Tangerine is a very focused author's attempt to follow in the footsteps of Ibn Battutah, visiting the places the great fourteenth-century Arab traveller visited and trying to recreate the experiences he had there. It is a genuinely interesting, genuinely insightful and ever so entertaining book. I naively assumed Travels with Herodotus would be a similar read, only focusing on the places Herodotus described: Persia, Egypt, Eastern Europe, etc. Sadly, Kapuscinski took a different approach. Travels with Herodotus is not an attempt to retrace Herodotus' steps (admittedly a tall order, as Herodotus was probably the best-travelled man of his age, or many another age for that matter). Rather it is a loving tribute to the book Ryszard Kapuscinski, a Polish foreign correspondent working in Africa and Asia for most of the second half of the twentieth century, calls his greatest inspiration, his main source of sustenance and his favourite travelling companion: Herodotus' Histories. In between recollections of his own travels, many of them beautifully written, Kapuscinski quotes from the Histories, analysing Herodotus' method and explaining how it came to shape his own views of the world and travel reportage. Sometimes the quotes are tenuously linked with places Kapuscinski himself visited or historical events Kapuscinski himself witnessed, but most of the time they seem randomly chosen, with nary an attempt at contextualisation or analysis. In the end, I grew rather weary of this method. I found myself increasingly skipping the Herodotus quotes, not because they were dull (they weren't), but because I failed to see their relevance to Kapuscinski's muddled narrative. I finished the book thinking I would rather have read Herodotus without Kapuscinski's asides, or Kapuscinski's memoirs without his constant digressions on Herodotus. Judging from other reviews of the book, I'm not the only reader who feels this way.

It's a pity Kapuscinski chose such an ill-thought-out approach to his last book, because when he is not losing himself in overambitious homage, he is a fine writer. Travels with Herodotus contains some excellent reportage, most of it dealing with the African countries where Kapuscinski spent a considerable part of his life. Like Herodotus before him, Kapuscinski is an objective reporter who seldom judges the people he meets (even when they rob him). Also like Herodotus, he has an eye for telling detail, recounting small stories as well as monumental ones, and often instead of monumental ones. His Socialist background adds an interesting touch. And he does really understand the subjects he is dealing with. On the rare occasions when he does go into analysis, he makes interesting observations on life and politics in developing countries, observations of which Herodotus himself would be proud. Unfortunately, however, most of the analyses and anecdotes recounted in Travels with Herodotus are too fragmented and disjointed to be truly memorable or insightful. They focus so much on isolated moments in Kapuscinski's travels that they fail to provide an insight into the greater picture. There are some great anecdotes in the book, but since they don't really go anywhere, they ultimately leave the reader unsatisfied. I myself ended up feeling that I would have liked to read more about Kapuscinski's time in the Sudan than merely his recollection of a Louis Armstrong concert he attended there, and more about his experiences in civil-war-era Congo than just his nerve-racking meeting with two soldiers who walked up to him all menacingly, only to humbly ask him for a cigarette. I also would have liked to read more about his experiences in 1960 Egypt (which was just then in the grips of an anti-alcohol campaign) than his nervous attempt to get rid of an empty beer bottle while being watched by people who might well be police informants. Because as evocative as these anecdotes are (they are!), they don't tell the whole story of the place and the age, nor even a tenth of it. They are fragmented impressions -- interesting and well-written, but fragmented nonetheless. In short, I guess I'll have to read some of Ryszard Kapuscinki's other books to find out why he is considered one of the greatest reporters of the twentieth century. I'm sure he has written books in which he does go into detail, sticks to the topic at hand and really reports, rather than leisurely recounting disjointed memories. Unfortunately, Travels with Herodotus isn't one of them.

As for Herodotus, I'll obviously have to reread his Histories, for whatever the shortcomings of Travels with Herodotus, it did most definitely whet my appetite for more Herodotus.

]]> 4.11 2004 Travels with Herodotus
author: Ryszard Kapuściński
name: Martine
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2004
rating: 3
read at: 2009/02/01
date added: 2010/01/10
shelves: continental-european, journalism-in-book-form, memoirs, non-fiction, disappointing, ancient-classics
review:
I love travelogues. I love classical antiquity. So I really expected to enjoy Ryszard Kapuscinski's Travels with Herodotus, an attempt to mix modern literary reportage with the writings of one of the greatest travelling reporters of all time, Herodotus. Sadly, however, the book was a bit of letdown. The old and new stuff didn't blend well, so the final result, while occasionally poignant and insightful, was a little underwhelming.

Maybe I went in with the wrong expectations. When I bought the book, I was expecting it to be something like , a frightfully erudite book with quotes so absurd that they frequently made me howl with laughter (in public, which was rather embarrassing). Travels with a Tangerine is a very focused author's attempt to follow in the footsteps of Ibn Battutah, visiting the places the great fourteenth-century Arab traveller visited and trying to recreate the experiences he had there. It is a genuinely interesting, genuinely insightful and ever so entertaining book. I naively assumed Travels with Herodotus would be a similar read, only focusing on the places Herodotus described: Persia, Egypt, Eastern Europe, etc. Sadly, Kapuscinski took a different approach. Travels with Herodotus is not an attempt to retrace Herodotus' steps (admittedly a tall order, as Herodotus was probably the best-travelled man of his age, or many another age for that matter). Rather it is a loving tribute to the book Ryszard Kapuscinski, a Polish foreign correspondent working in Africa and Asia for most of the second half of the twentieth century, calls his greatest inspiration, his main source of sustenance and his favourite travelling companion: Herodotus' Histories. In between recollections of his own travels, many of them beautifully written, Kapuscinski quotes from the Histories, analysing Herodotus' method and explaining how it came to shape his own views of the world and travel reportage. Sometimes the quotes are tenuously linked with places Kapuscinski himself visited or historical events Kapuscinski himself witnessed, but most of the time they seem randomly chosen, with nary an attempt at contextualisation or analysis. In the end, I grew rather weary of this method. I found myself increasingly skipping the Herodotus quotes, not because they were dull (they weren't), but because I failed to see their relevance to Kapuscinski's muddled narrative. I finished the book thinking I would rather have read Herodotus without Kapuscinski's asides, or Kapuscinski's memoirs without his constant digressions on Herodotus. Judging from other reviews of the book, I'm not the only reader who feels this way.

It's a pity Kapuscinski chose such an ill-thought-out approach to his last book, because when he is not losing himself in overambitious homage, he is a fine writer. Travels with Herodotus contains some excellent reportage, most of it dealing with the African countries where Kapuscinski spent a considerable part of his life. Like Herodotus before him, Kapuscinski is an objective reporter who seldom judges the people he meets (even when they rob him). Also like Herodotus, he has an eye for telling detail, recounting small stories as well as monumental ones, and often instead of monumental ones. His Socialist background adds an interesting touch. And he does really understand the subjects he is dealing with. On the rare occasions when he does go into analysis, he makes interesting observations on life and politics in developing countries, observations of which Herodotus himself would be proud. Unfortunately, however, most of the analyses and anecdotes recounted in Travels with Herodotus are too fragmented and disjointed to be truly memorable or insightful. They focus so much on isolated moments in Kapuscinski's travels that they fail to provide an insight into the greater picture. There are some great anecdotes in the book, but since they don't really go anywhere, they ultimately leave the reader unsatisfied. I myself ended up feeling that I would have liked to read more about Kapuscinski's time in the Sudan than merely his recollection of a Louis Armstrong concert he attended there, and more about his experiences in civil-war-era Congo than just his nerve-racking meeting with two soldiers who walked up to him all menacingly, only to humbly ask him for a cigarette. I also would have liked to read more about his experiences in 1960 Egypt (which was just then in the grips of an anti-alcohol campaign) than his nervous attempt to get rid of an empty beer bottle while being watched by people who might well be police informants. Because as evocative as these anecdotes are (they are!), they don't tell the whole story of the place and the age, nor even a tenth of it. They are fragmented impressions -- interesting and well-written, but fragmented nonetheless. In short, I guess I'll have to read some of Ryszard Kapuscinki's other books to find out why he is considered one of the greatest reporters of the twentieth century. I'm sure he has written books in which he does go into detail, sticks to the topic at hand and really reports, rather than leisurely recounting disjointed memories. Unfortunately, Travels with Herodotus isn't one of them.

As for Herodotus, I'll obviously have to reread his Histories, for whatever the shortcomings of Travels with Herodotus, it did most definitely whet my appetite for more Herodotus.


]]> <![CDATA[Regeneration (Regeneration, #1)]]> 5872 Regeneration, one in Pat Barker's series of novels confronting the psychological effects of World War I, focuses on treatment methods during the war and the story of a decorated English officer sent to a military hospital after publicly declaring he will no longer fight. Yet the novel is much more. Written in sparse prose that is shockingly clear—the descriptions of electronic treatments are particularly harrowing—it combines real-life characters and events with fictional ones in a work that examines the insanity of war like no other. Barker also weaves in issues of class and politics in this compactly powerful book. Other books in the series include The Eye in the Door and the Booker Award winner The Ghost Road.]]> 256 Pat Barker 0140236236 Martine 4 Regeneration, the first part of Pat Barker's acclaimed Regeneration Trilogy, centres on Dr W.H.R. Rivers, a real-life army psychiatrist at Craiglockhart War Hospital who treated the likes of Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen for shell-shock. Well-researched, well-imagined and well-written, it's an interesting mix of fact and fiction that provides a good insight into Great War-era Britain and early-twentieth-century psychiatry. A proper review will follow once I've read the whole trilogy.]]> 4.04 1991 Regeneration (Regeneration, #1)
author: Pat Barker
name: Martine
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1991
rating: 4
read at: 2010/01/01
date added: 2010/01/10
shelves: british, film, modern-fiction, psychological-drama, war, historical-fiction
review:
Regeneration, the first part of Pat Barker's acclaimed Regeneration Trilogy, centres on Dr W.H.R. Rivers, a real-life army psychiatrist at Craiglockhart War Hospital who treated the likes of Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen for shell-shock. Well-researched, well-imagined and well-written, it's an interesting mix of fact and fiction that provides a good insight into Great War-era Britain and early-twentieth-century psychiatry. A proper review will follow once I've read the whole trilogy.
]]> <![CDATA[Gardens of the Moon (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #1)]]> 55399 Vast legions of gods, mages, humans, dragons and all manner of creatures play out the fate of the Malazan Empire in this first book in a major epic fantasy series from Steven Erikson.

The Malazan Empire simmers with discontent, bled dry by interminable warfare, bitter infighting and bloody confrontations with the formidable Anomander Rake and his Tiste Andii, ancient and implacable sorcerers. Even the imperial legions, long inured to the bloodshed, yearn for some respite. Yet Empress Laseen's rule remains absolute, enforced by her dread Claw assassins.

For Sergeant Whiskeyjack and his squad of Bridgeburners, and for Tattersail, surviving cadre mage of the Second Legion, the aftermath of the siege of Pale should have been a time to mourn the many dead. But Darujhistan, last of the Free Cities of Genabackis, yet holds out. It is to this ancient citadel that Laseen turns her predatory gaze.

However, it would appear that the Empire is not alone in this great game. Sinister, shadowbound forces are gathering as the gods themselves prepare to play their hand...

Conceived and written on a panoramic scale, Gardens of the Moon is epic fantasy of the highest order--an enthralling adventure by an outstanding new voice.]]> 666 Steven Erikson 0765348780 Martine 0 to-read 3.91 1999 Gardens of the Moon (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #1)
author: Steven Erikson
name: Martine
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1999
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/01/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Gathering Storm (Wheel of Time, #12; A Memory of Light, #1)]]> 6053426 783 Robert Jordan 1841491659 Martine 4
I got into Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series about eight years ago. Despite protestations from friends that I should steer clear of it because it went completely off the rails after about five books and probably wouldn't ever be finished, I gave it a shot, and like so many other readers I got hooked. This was unfortunate, because as I discovered halfway through the series, my friends were right. The Wheel of Time did go off the rails, and badly, with Robert Jordan losing himself in so many insignificant subplots and failing so utterly to bring the story closer to its conclusion that it seemed doubtful that it would ever be finished. Nevertheless I soldiered on, reading each new instalment despite my mounting frustration with them, because hey, I was hooked. So much so that I actually joined a Wheel of Time newsgroup at one point, where I spent many hours discussing theories about characters' double identities and where the series might be headed. That newsgroup probably did more for my love of fantasy literature than The Lord of Rings (my introduction to the genre, which I still love to death) ever did. I miss it quite a bit -- it was fabulous.

And then Robert Jordan did something incredible. Something his fans had joked about for years but had never considered a serious possibility. He passed away before he could finish the series, rendering the massive investment his fans had made in it (we are talking about eleven books of about nine hundred pages each) virtually useless, because after all that theorising, after all those looooooooong hours spent discussing the minutiae of the books, no one would ever find out how the story ended.

Enter Brandon Sanderson, a lesser-known fantasy author of whom I had never heard before, although with hindsight I probably should have. He was hired by Jordan's wife to finish the series, using her husband's extensive notes, unfinished passages and instructions for support. Like many others, I was sceptical about the enterprise, and not sure I wanted to read the result.

But then the prologue to Sanderson's sequel was posted on line, about a month before the book's release date, and to my infinite surprise it was good. And about a week later the first chapter of the sequel was leaked on line, and to my mounting surprise that was good, too -- more focussed than anything Jordan himself had written in a while, except perhaps New Spring, the much-maligned prequel to the series. In just two short chapters, Sanderson had got rid of several characters and plotlines which had irked myself and other fans for ages. It actually looked like he was getting the plot to move forwards, which was such a pleasant surprise that I suddenly found myself really, really looking forward to seeing what else he had done to Jordan's universe. So I bought the book the day it was released, ready to lose myself in Randland once more.

So what has Sanderson done to Randland? In a word, he has revived the series. The Gathering Storm is by far the best instalment in the Wheel of Time saga of the last ten years. An action-packed romp which actually takes the story forwards several weeks (gasp), it's a return to the form of the earliest books, before Jordan started introducing every single Aes Sedai in existence, expecting us to care about their minor squabbles. In marked contrast to Jordan's later books, The Gathering Storm actually focuses on the main characters (you know, the original heroes of the series, who got us interested in it in the first place), allowing them to achieve goals which had eluded them for quite some time. It eliminates unnecessary side plots like the Prophet and the Shaido, often swiftly so. It is largely free of padding (although a very critical reader might ask what exactly Mat's storyline is meant to accomplish, other than getting him on his way to the Tower of Ghenjei and showing that the Dark One is touching the world). And best of all, it is faithful to the style of the early Jordan, which is to say without endless descriptions of clothes and characters taking baths, yanking their braids, tapping their feet, etc. Nynaeve actually overcomes her urge to yank her braid every time she gets mad at the beginning of the book, which I'm sure is a development welcomed by any reader of the series. In other words, Sanderson has managed to channel Jordan without all the latter's infuriating obsessions, following Jordan's style without copying its bad aspects. I wouldn't say the transition is seamless (Sanderson's style, featuring many short sentences, is punchier than Jordan's), but it certainly isn't jarring, either. While there is the odd moment where you'll find yourself thinking, 'Hmmm, that didn't sound entirely Jordanesque,' these moments are more than made up for by Sanderson's ability to focus on essentials, in my opinion. It's refreshing, reading Randland stories without all the padding.

So what actually happens in The Gathering Storm? (WARNING: MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD) Well, the Prophet finally dies (about time). Tuon (one of my favourite characters, though less so here than before) finally becomes Empress of Seanchan. The Seanchan finally attack the White Tower, which Egwene has been prophesying for ages. Egwene herself finally becomes Amyrlin Seat, in quite an impressive manner. Rand, who seemed to be going increasingly mad in the last few books, finally finds himself again, in a way which holds promise for the future. Perrin finally accepts his wolf self, while Mat and his cronies finally set out for the Tower of Ghenjei, a subplot anyone with a brain has seen coming for the last seven books or so. For her part, Aviendha is finally accepted as a Wise One, in a manner befitting those strange Aiel customs. Gawyn, who was fighting on the wrong side, finally sees the light (ha!) and joins the rebel Aes Sedai. Siuan Sanche and Gareth Bryne finally become an item, though rather chastely so. Two more Forsaken are taken care of (presumably). And in two of the more brilliant plot twists, a mysterious character from the beginning of the series is revealed to be Black Ajah (a jaw-dropping chapter, very well written and conceived), while Elaida is deposed in a way which had me chuckling out loud. I'm not sure who came up with the idea for Elaida's demise, Jordan or Sanderson, but whoever it was, he has a rich sense of poetic justice. It's just too, too good.

Of course, many storylines still remain unresolved, and Sanderson now believes he will need two books to tie them up, not one, as previously planned. I have faith in him, though. I know that these two books of his will really be two books, not seven (as with Jordan). And I have no doubt that they will be good books. Books in which we will finally see Moiraine make a reappearance. Books in which all the prophecies and viewings which have been bandied around for the last twelve books will finally be fulfilled (or not, as the case may be). In which Perrin, Lan, Logain, Mazrim Taim, Slayer, Elayne, Galad, Thom, Birgitte, Olver, the Sea Folk and the Kin will probably get to see more action than they did in The Gathering Storm, and in which the stage is well and truly set for Tarmon Gai’don, the final battle. And I also know that thanks to Sanderson, I am excited about this series again. I will probably spend more time than I care for at Wheel of Time websites over the next few months, looking up old prophecies and comparing theories about where the story is heading. And when it's all over, two books from now, I will in all likelihood look back on the Wheel of Time series with fondness, rather than the bitterness Jordan was increasingly inspiring in me.

Thanks for that, Brandon. After all the time I have invested in this series, I need to love it again, rather than despair of it. It now looks like I may, which is great.]]> 4.43 2009 The Gathering Storm (Wheel of Time, #12; A Memory of Light, #1)
author: Robert Jordan
name: Martine
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2009/11/01
date added: 2010/01/07
shelves: fantasy, modern-fiction, north-american
review:
Wow. Was this ever a pleasant surprise.

I got into Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series about eight years ago. Despite protestations from friends that I should steer clear of it because it went completely off the rails after about five books and probably wouldn't ever be finished, I gave it a shot, and like so many other readers I got hooked. This was unfortunate, because as I discovered halfway through the series, my friends were right. The Wheel of Time did go off the rails, and badly, with Robert Jordan losing himself in so many insignificant subplots and failing so utterly to bring the story closer to its conclusion that it seemed doubtful that it would ever be finished. Nevertheless I soldiered on, reading each new instalment despite my mounting frustration with them, because hey, I was hooked. So much so that I actually joined a Wheel of Time newsgroup at one point, where I spent many hours discussing theories about characters' double identities and where the series might be headed. That newsgroup probably did more for my love of fantasy literature than The Lord of Rings (my introduction to the genre, which I still love to death) ever did. I miss it quite a bit -- it was fabulous.

And then Robert Jordan did something incredible. Something his fans had joked about for years but had never considered a serious possibility. He passed away before he could finish the series, rendering the massive investment his fans had made in it (we are talking about eleven books of about nine hundred pages each) virtually useless, because after all that theorising, after all those looooooooong hours spent discussing the minutiae of the books, no one would ever find out how the story ended.

Enter Brandon Sanderson, a lesser-known fantasy author of whom I had never heard before, although with hindsight I probably should have. He was hired by Jordan's wife to finish the series, using her husband's extensive notes, unfinished passages and instructions for support. Like many others, I was sceptical about the enterprise, and not sure I wanted to read the result.

But then the prologue to Sanderson's sequel was posted on line, about a month before the book's release date, and to my infinite surprise it was good. And about a week later the first chapter of the sequel was leaked on line, and to my mounting surprise that was good, too -- more focussed than anything Jordan himself had written in a while, except perhaps New Spring, the much-maligned prequel to the series. In just two short chapters, Sanderson had got rid of several characters and plotlines which had irked myself and other fans for ages. It actually looked like he was getting the plot to move forwards, which was such a pleasant surprise that I suddenly found myself really, really looking forward to seeing what else he had done to Jordan's universe. So I bought the book the day it was released, ready to lose myself in Randland once more.

So what has Sanderson done to Randland? In a word, he has revived the series. The Gathering Storm is by far the best instalment in the Wheel of Time saga of the last ten years. An action-packed romp which actually takes the story forwards several weeks (gasp), it's a return to the form of the earliest books, before Jordan started introducing every single Aes Sedai in existence, expecting us to care about their minor squabbles. In marked contrast to Jordan's later books, The Gathering Storm actually focuses on the main characters (you know, the original heroes of the series, who got us interested in it in the first place), allowing them to achieve goals which had eluded them for quite some time. It eliminates unnecessary side plots like the Prophet and the Shaido, often swiftly so. It is largely free of padding (although a very critical reader might ask what exactly Mat's storyline is meant to accomplish, other than getting him on his way to the Tower of Ghenjei and showing that the Dark One is touching the world). And best of all, it is faithful to the style of the early Jordan, which is to say without endless descriptions of clothes and characters taking baths, yanking their braids, tapping their feet, etc. Nynaeve actually overcomes her urge to yank her braid every time she gets mad at the beginning of the book, which I'm sure is a development welcomed by any reader of the series. In other words, Sanderson has managed to channel Jordan without all the latter's infuriating obsessions, following Jordan's style without copying its bad aspects. I wouldn't say the transition is seamless (Sanderson's style, featuring many short sentences, is punchier than Jordan's), but it certainly isn't jarring, either. While there is the odd moment where you'll find yourself thinking, 'Hmmm, that didn't sound entirely Jordanesque,' these moments are more than made up for by Sanderson's ability to focus on essentials, in my opinion. It's refreshing, reading Randland stories without all the padding.

So what actually happens in The Gathering Storm? (WARNING: MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD) Well, the Prophet finally dies (about time). Tuon (one of my favourite characters, though less so here than before) finally becomes Empress of Seanchan. The Seanchan finally attack the White Tower, which Egwene has been prophesying for ages. Egwene herself finally becomes Amyrlin Seat, in quite an impressive manner. Rand, who seemed to be going increasingly mad in the last few books, finally finds himself again, in a way which holds promise for the future. Perrin finally accepts his wolf self, while Mat and his cronies finally set out for the Tower of Ghenjei, a subplot anyone with a brain has seen coming for the last seven books or so. For her part, Aviendha is finally accepted as a Wise One, in a manner befitting those strange Aiel customs. Gawyn, who was fighting on the wrong side, finally sees the light (ha!) and joins the rebel Aes Sedai. Siuan Sanche and Gareth Bryne finally become an item, though rather chastely so. Two more Forsaken are taken care of (presumably). And in two of the more brilliant plot twists, a mysterious character from the beginning of the series is revealed to be Black Ajah (a jaw-dropping chapter, very well written and conceived), while Elaida is deposed in a way which had me chuckling out loud. I'm not sure who came up with the idea for Elaida's demise, Jordan or Sanderson, but whoever it was, he has a rich sense of poetic justice. It's just too, too good.

Of course, many storylines still remain unresolved, and Sanderson now believes he will need two books to tie them up, not one, as previously planned. I have faith in him, though. I know that these two books of his will really be two books, not seven (as with Jordan). And I have no doubt that they will be good books. Books in which we will finally see Moiraine make a reappearance. Books in which all the prophecies and viewings which have been bandied around for the last twelve books will finally be fulfilled (or not, as the case may be). In which Perrin, Lan, Logain, Mazrim Taim, Slayer, Elayne, Galad, Thom, Birgitte, Olver, the Sea Folk and the Kin will probably get to see more action than they did in The Gathering Storm, and in which the stage is well and truly set for Tarmon Gai’don, the final battle. And I also know that thanks to Sanderson, I am excited about this series again. I will probably spend more time than I care for at Wheel of Time websites over the next few months, looking up old prophecies and comparing theories about where the story is heading. And when it's all over, two books from now, I will in all likelihood look back on the Wheel of Time series with fondness, rather than the bitterness Jordan was increasingly inspiring in me.

Thanks for that, Brandon. After all the time I have invested in this series, I need to love it again, rather than despair of it. It now looks like I may, which is great.
]]> Oscar Wilde 110179

From the Trade Paperback edition.]]> 0 Richard Ellman 0517699427 Martine 0 to-read 4.33 1987 Oscar Wilde
author: Richard Ellman
name: Martine
average rating: 4.33
book published: 1987
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/01/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Lanark 161037 560 Alasdair Gray 184195120X Martine 0 to-read 4.12 1981 Lanark
author: Alasdair Gray
name: Martine
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1981
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/01/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Breakfast at վڴڲԲ’s and Three Stories]]> 251688 Holly Golightly knows that nothing bad can ever happen to you at Tiffany's.

In this seductive, wistful masterpiece, Capote created a woman whose name has entered the American idiom and whose style is a part of the literary landscape—her poignancy, wit, and naïveté continue to charm.

It's New York in the 1940s, where the martinis flow from cocktail hour till breakfast at Tiffany's... And nice girls don't, except, of course, Holly Golightly. Pursued by Mafia gangsters and playboy millionaires, Holly is a fragile eyeful of tawny hair and turned-up nose, a heart-breaker, a perplexer, a traveler, a tease. She is irrepressibly 'top banana in the shock department', and one of the shining flowers of American fiction.

Also included are three of Capote's best-known stories:
� House of Flowers - Ottilie is entranced by a beautiful young man, and leaves her life and friends to live with him and his old grandmother, who seems to hate her.
� A Diamond Guitar - Hear the story of the prized possession of a younger prison inmate, a rhinestone-studded guitar.
� A Christmas Memory - A poignant tale of two innocents—a small boy and the old woman who is his best friend—whose sweetness contains a hard, sharp kernel of truth.]]> 142 Truman Capote Martine 4 Breakfast at Tiffany's, Truman Capote's best-known novella? I guess it's understandable, given how iconic Hepburn's portrayal of Holly Golightly is. In fact, I think Hepburn's Holly may well be my all-time favourite movie heroine. She's a slut, a snob and a gold-digger, and her life is so shallow and vapid that it should be reprehensible to me, but at the same time she is so delightfully charming and eccentric that it is impossible not to fall under her spell and end up madly in love with her. As played by Hepburn, Holly is the ultimate It Girl, witty and beautiful and so stylish it hurts, but vulnerable and conflicted enough for us not to envy her.

Capote's Holly is slightly different from Hepburn's. She is tougher and more potty-mouthed than her movie counterpart, with a touch of racism that I don't remember from the film. She also seems a bit more hell-bent on self-destruction, and less inclined to be saved by the well-meaning narrator. For these and other reasons, she should be mildly off-putting, but for some reason she's not. I guess it's because she is immensely alive -- less girlishly and innocently so than in the film, but just as alluring. And she doesn't need Hepburn's charm to come off the page. Capote did a great job imagining Holly and fleshing her out, giving her one good line after the other and endearing quirks galore. It probably isn't fair to him that I (along with millions of other readers, no doubt) kept picturing Audrey Hepburn while reading his descriptions of Holly, to the point where I was shocked to discover Capote imagined her as a blonde (surely not?), but thankfully, my love for the film didn't prevent me from recognising the quality of the writing, which is beyond dispute. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Capote was a master storyteller with a finely developed ear for dialogue and a massive flair for making the unglamorous glamorous. He used both gifts to great effect in Breakfast at Tiffany's, creating a story which, while less romantic and emotionally gratifying than the film adaptation, nevertheless succeeds in making the reader yearn for Holly the same way the narrator does. The prose is effortlessly elegant, even when it refers to ugly things, which it does rather more regularly than George Axelrod and Blake Edwards seem to have cared to replicate in the film. Timeless and evocative, it is a story about friendship valued and lost, about belonging and refusing to belong, and like the film, it stays with you as the perfect blend of cynicism and sentiment, with an added sense of loss. I can't think why I waited so long to read it...

The other three stories in the collection, 'House of Flowers', 'A Diamond Guitar' and 'A Christmas Memory', are almost as strong as Breakfast at Tiffany's. Like the better-known novella which opens the book, 'A Diamond Guitar' and 'A Christmas Memory' are elegies on broken friendships, on bonds shared and then lost, and like վڴڲԲ’s, they are poignant and evocative, with moments of startling intimacy and many a well-turned phrase and eye-opening observation. 'House of Flowers' (about the romance between the most beautiful prostitute in Port-au-Prince and the peasant who makes an honest woman of her) is less poignant, but just as memorable for its matter-of-fact weirdness and quirkiness (spider bread, anyone?). All three short stories prove that Capote was a master of the genre, equally at home in first-person narratives and third-person ones, with male heroes and female ones, with child protagonists and more mature ones. The four stories contained in Breakfast at Tiffany's all have vastly different points of view, styles and subjects, but in their own ways, they are all interesting and memorable, making it all the more regrettable that Capote only published so few of them. He was obviously quite the short-story teller.

Do seek this collection out if you haven't already -- you won't regret it.
]]> 3.88 1958 Breakfast at վڴڲԲ’s and Three Stories
author: Truman Capote
name: Martine
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1958
rating: 4
read at: 2009/12/01
date added: 2010/01/03
shelves: favourites, film, modern-fiction, north-american, novellas, short-stories
review:
Is it wrong that I kept seeing Audrey Hepburn in my mind's eye while reading Breakfast at Tiffany's, Truman Capote's best-known novella? I guess it's understandable, given how iconic Hepburn's portrayal of Holly Golightly is. In fact, I think Hepburn's Holly may well be my all-time favourite movie heroine. She's a slut, a snob and a gold-digger, and her life is so shallow and vapid that it should be reprehensible to me, but at the same time she is so delightfully charming and eccentric that it is impossible not to fall under her spell and end up madly in love with her. As played by Hepburn, Holly is the ultimate It Girl, witty and beautiful and so stylish it hurts, but vulnerable and conflicted enough for us not to envy her.

Capote's Holly is slightly different from Hepburn's. She is tougher and more potty-mouthed than her movie counterpart, with a touch of racism that I don't remember from the film. She also seems a bit more hell-bent on self-destruction, and less inclined to be saved by the well-meaning narrator. For these and other reasons, she should be mildly off-putting, but for some reason she's not. I guess it's because she is immensely alive -- less girlishly and innocently so than in the film, but just as alluring. And she doesn't need Hepburn's charm to come off the page. Capote did a great job imagining Holly and fleshing her out, giving her one good line after the other and endearing quirks galore. It probably isn't fair to him that I (along with millions of other readers, no doubt) kept picturing Audrey Hepburn while reading his descriptions of Holly, to the point where I was shocked to discover Capote imagined her as a blonde (surely not?), but thankfully, my love for the film didn't prevent me from recognising the quality of the writing, which is beyond dispute. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Capote was a master storyteller with a finely developed ear for dialogue and a massive flair for making the unglamorous glamorous. He used both gifts to great effect in Breakfast at Tiffany's, creating a story which, while less romantic and emotionally gratifying than the film adaptation, nevertheless succeeds in making the reader yearn for Holly the same way the narrator does. The prose is effortlessly elegant, even when it refers to ugly things, which it does rather more regularly than George Axelrod and Blake Edwards seem to have cared to replicate in the film. Timeless and evocative, it is a story about friendship valued and lost, about belonging and refusing to belong, and like the film, it stays with you as the perfect blend of cynicism and sentiment, with an added sense of loss. I can't think why I waited so long to read it...

The other three stories in the collection, 'House of Flowers', 'A Diamond Guitar' and 'A Christmas Memory', are almost as strong as Breakfast at Tiffany's. Like the better-known novella which opens the book, 'A Diamond Guitar' and 'A Christmas Memory' are elegies on broken friendships, on bonds shared and then lost, and like վڴڲԲ’s, they are poignant and evocative, with moments of startling intimacy and many a well-turned phrase and eye-opening observation. 'House of Flowers' (about the romance between the most beautiful prostitute in Port-au-Prince and the peasant who makes an honest woman of her) is less poignant, but just as memorable for its matter-of-fact weirdness and quirkiness (spider bread, anyone?). All three short stories prove that Capote was a master of the genre, equally at home in first-person narratives and third-person ones, with male heroes and female ones, with child protagonists and more mature ones. The four stories contained in Breakfast at Tiffany's all have vastly different points of view, styles and subjects, but in their own ways, they are all interesting and memorable, making it all the more regrettable that Capote only published so few of them. He was obviously quite the short-story teller.

Do seek this collection out if you haven't already -- you won't regret it.

]]> <![CDATA[The English Girls' School Story: Subversion and Challenge in a Traditional Conservative Literary Genre]]> 7176191 292 Judith Humphrey 1933146508 Martine 0 to-read 4.00 2009 The English Girls' School Story: Subversion and Challenge in a Traditional Conservative Literary Genre
author: Judith Humphrey
name: Martine
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/01/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Alphabet of Thorn 81075
Then, during the coronation of the new Queen of Raine, a young mage gives Nepenthe a book that has defied translation. Written in a language of thorns, it speaks to Nepenthe's soul � and becomes her secret obsession. And, as the words escape the brambles and reveal themselves, Nepenthe finds her destiny entwined with that of the young queen's. Sooner than she thinks, she will have to choose between the life she has led and the life she was born to lead...

]]> 291 Patricia A. McKillip 0441012434 Martine 0 to-read 4.09 2004 Alphabet of Thorn
author: Patricia A. McKillip
name: Martine
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2009/12/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century]]> 4936457 319 Ian Mortimer 0224079948 Martine 0 to-read 3.99 2008 The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century
author: Ian Mortimer
name: Martine
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2009/11/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Daughter of Time (Inspector Alan Grant, #5)]]> 77661 206 Josephine Tey Martine 4 The Daughter of Time is an unlikely detective story. It's the story of a police inspector who, whilst laid up in bed because of a leg injury, is presented with a portrait of England's King Richard III (reigned 1483-1485) and comes to the conclusion that a man so genteel-looking couldn't possibly be the ruthless murderer Shakespeare made him out to be, because 'villains don't suffer, and that face is full of the most dreadful pain' (judge for yourself ). So with a little help from the nurses and the friends and colleagues who come and visit him in the hospital, he starts digging in fifteenth-century history, only to come up with a few interesting theories of his own, all of which seem to point to history's having given Richard a rotten deal. For in reality, Tey has her bed-ridden hero discover, Richard III had no motive to have half of his family (including his two under-age nephews) murdered, as sixteenth-century historians alleged. He may not have been a hunchback, either. Rather he was the victim of revisionist history as written by the Tudor kings who succeeded him and who had their own reasons for vilifying him. History, lest we forget, is written by the victors, and boy, can they do damage to a guy's reputation if they have a talented playwright on their side. Just ask Macbeth of Scotland, who was by all accounts a fairly good and popular king.

I'm not sure how historically accurate the details of Tey's argument are, nor whether her evidence would stand up in a modern court of justice, but the case for Richard is presented in a convincing manner and makes a gripping read, mainly because the protagonist, Inspector Alan Grant, is absolutely convinced of Richard's innocence and hell-bent on finding evidence to support his subjective impression of the man, taking a violent dislike to Richard's most famous biographer, Sir Thomas More, in the process. I love books in which the characters get passionate and even a little obsessive about things, and Tey's Inspector Grant is nothing if not obsessive. His ferocious zeal for his quest (often expressed in violent outbursts to startled nurses) is quite infectious, to the point where you find yourself wishing for a big pile of history books and access to the British Museum to verify Grabt's discoveries for yourself. At least that's what the book did for me. After finishing The Daughter of Time, I spent several hours on line Googling the authors and historians Tey mentions in her book, some historical, others seemingly fictitious. In the course of my research, I came across several Ricardian societies, all working towards a rehabilitation of the last Plantagenet king. Many of their members seem to have joined after reading The Daughter of Time. In short, Tey's book has been influential, and for good reason -- it's a fascinating journey through English history, and a grand tale of high-minded obsession to boot. It had me add several history books to my to-read list. I love books which make me enthusiastic for previously unexplored subjects, so as far as that's concerned, Tey did a great job.

Is that to say The Daughter of Time is a faultless book? By no means. While I was impressed with the way in which Tey shared her research and sustained her reader's interest in her detective's quest for the truth, I often found the dialogue in The Daughter of Time lacklustre. Not only do Tey's researchers regularly have unlikely conversations about clues which I suspect would be very hard to dig up five hundred years after the fact (even if one had access to the venerable records held by the British Museum), but to make matters worse they all sound identical, all speaking in the same benignly polite but slightly ironic voice. As portrayed by Tey, middle-aged British police inspector Alan Grant and his much younger American assistant Brent Carradine sound much the same, and there is little to distinguish between the female characters, either. I think the book could have done with slightly more individualised and characteristic dialogue, but really, that's a minor complaint. For the most part, The Daughter of Time succeeds admirably in what it does, which is making and keeping its readers interested in a five hundred-year-old mystery, while making a few interesting observations about the way history is written along the way. I liked the examples of what Inspector Grant refers to as 'Tonypandy' -- legendary historical events which live on in popular consciousness despite the fact that they have been proven to be untrue. If Tey's research is anything to go by, the legend of Richard III falls squarely into the Tonypandy category. Needless to say, that doesn't make Shakespeare's play of the same name any less interesting, but it does add an interesting dimension to the story, doesn't it?

For those who wish to read more about the evidence supporting Richard's innocence, here's , first published in 1786, which seems to have been one of the bases for The Daughter of Time (the other being Clements Markham's later Richard III: His Life and Character Reviewed in the Light of Recent Research).
]]> 3.89 1951 The Daughter of Time (Inspector Alan Grant, #5)
author: Josephine Tey
name: Martine
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1951
rating: 4
read at: 2009/10/01
date added: 2009/10/11
shelves: british, crime, modern-fiction, history
review:
The Daughter of Time is an unlikely detective story. It's the story of a police inspector who, whilst laid up in bed because of a leg injury, is presented with a portrait of England's King Richard III (reigned 1483-1485) and comes to the conclusion that a man so genteel-looking couldn't possibly be the ruthless murderer Shakespeare made him out to be, because 'villains don't suffer, and that face is full of the most dreadful pain' (judge for yourself ). So with a little help from the nurses and the friends and colleagues who come and visit him in the hospital, he starts digging in fifteenth-century history, only to come up with a few interesting theories of his own, all of which seem to point to history's having given Richard a rotten deal. For in reality, Tey has her bed-ridden hero discover, Richard III had no motive to have half of his family (including his two under-age nephews) murdered, as sixteenth-century historians alleged. He may not have been a hunchback, either. Rather he was the victim of revisionist history as written by the Tudor kings who succeeded him and who had their own reasons for vilifying him. History, lest we forget, is written by the victors, and boy, can they do damage to a guy's reputation if they have a talented playwright on their side. Just ask Macbeth of Scotland, who was by all accounts a fairly good and popular king.

I'm not sure how historically accurate the details of Tey's argument are, nor whether her evidence would stand up in a modern court of justice, but the case for Richard is presented in a convincing manner and makes a gripping read, mainly because the protagonist, Inspector Alan Grant, is absolutely convinced of Richard's innocence and hell-bent on finding evidence to support his subjective impression of the man, taking a violent dislike to Richard's most famous biographer, Sir Thomas More, in the process. I love books in which the characters get passionate and even a little obsessive about things, and Tey's Inspector Grant is nothing if not obsessive. His ferocious zeal for his quest (often expressed in violent outbursts to startled nurses) is quite infectious, to the point where you find yourself wishing for a big pile of history books and access to the British Museum to verify Grabt's discoveries for yourself. At least that's what the book did for me. After finishing The Daughter of Time, I spent several hours on line Googling the authors and historians Tey mentions in her book, some historical, others seemingly fictitious. In the course of my research, I came across several Ricardian societies, all working towards a rehabilitation of the last Plantagenet king. Many of their members seem to have joined after reading The Daughter of Time. In short, Tey's book has been influential, and for good reason -- it's a fascinating journey through English history, and a grand tale of high-minded obsession to boot. It had me add several history books to my to-read list. I love books which make me enthusiastic for previously unexplored subjects, so as far as that's concerned, Tey did a great job.

Is that to say The Daughter of Time is a faultless book? By no means. While I was impressed with the way in which Tey shared her research and sustained her reader's interest in her detective's quest for the truth, I often found the dialogue in The Daughter of Time lacklustre. Not only do Tey's researchers regularly have unlikely conversations about clues which I suspect would be very hard to dig up five hundred years after the fact (even if one had access to the venerable records held by the British Museum), but to make matters worse they all sound identical, all speaking in the same benignly polite but slightly ironic voice. As portrayed by Tey, middle-aged British police inspector Alan Grant and his much younger American assistant Brent Carradine sound much the same, and there is little to distinguish between the female characters, either. I think the book could have done with slightly more individualised and characteristic dialogue, but really, that's a minor complaint. For the most part, The Daughter of Time succeeds admirably in what it does, which is making and keeping its readers interested in a five hundred-year-old mystery, while making a few interesting observations about the way history is written along the way. I liked the examples of what Inspector Grant refers to as 'Tonypandy' -- legendary historical events which live on in popular consciousness despite the fact that they have been proven to be untrue. If Tey's research is anything to go by, the legend of Richard III falls squarely into the Tonypandy category. Needless to say, that doesn't make Shakespeare's play of the same name any less interesting, but it does add an interesting dimension to the story, doesn't it?

For those who wish to read more about the evidence supporting Richard's innocence, here's , first published in 1786, which seems to have been one of the bases for The Daughter of Time (the other being Clements Markham's later Richard III: His Life and Character Reviewed in the Light of Recent Research).

]]> <![CDATA[A Man for All Seasons: A Play in Two Acts]]> 403098 163 Robert Bolt 0679728228 Martine 0 to-read 3.89 1960 A Man for All Seasons: A Play in Two Acts
author: Robert Bolt
name: Martine
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1960
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2009/10/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Wars of the Roses 158620 The Wars of the Roses is history at its very best—swift and compelling, rich in character, pageantry, and drama, and vivid in its re-creation of an astonishing period of history.

Look for special features inside.
Join the Circle for author chats and more.
RandomHouseReadersCircle.com]]> 463 Alison Weir 0345404335 Martine 0 to-read 4.00 1995 The Wars of the Roses
author: Alison Weir
name: Martine
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2009/10/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Place of Greater Safety 101921 749 Hilary Mantel 0312426399 Martine 0 to-read 3.98 1992 A Place of Greater Safety
author: Hilary Mantel
name: Martine
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1992
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2009/10/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Game of Kings (The Lymond Chronicles, #1)]]> 112077 543 Dorothy Dunnett 0679777431 Martine 0 to-read 4.15 1961 The Game of Kings (The Lymond Chronicles, #1)
author: Dorothy Dunnett
name: Martine
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1961
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2009/10/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse]]> 13514
Containing all the themes common in Hesse's great novels Siddhartha, Steppenwolf, and Demian—and mirroring events in his own life, these exquisite short pieces exhibit the same mystical and romantic impulses that contribute to the haunting brilliance of his major works. Several stories, including "The Poet," "The Fairy Tale About the Wicker Chair," and "The Painter," examine the dilemma of the artist, torn between the drive for perfection and the temptations of pleasure and social success. Other tales reflect changes and struggles within society: in "Faldum," a city is irrevocably transformed when each resident is granted his or her fondest wish; in "Strange News from Another Planet," "If the War Continues," and "The European," nightmarish landscapes convey Hesse's devastating critiques of nationalism, barbarism, and war.

Illuminating and inspiring, The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse will challenge and enchant readers of all ages. A distinguished and historic publication, this fine translation by Jack Zipes captures their subtlety and elegance for decades nto come.]]> 266 Hermann Hesse 0553377760 Martine 0 to-read 4.03 1919 The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse
author: Hermann Hesse
name: Martine
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1919
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2009/10/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?: A Swashbuckling Tale of High Adventures, Questionable Ethics, and Professional Hedonism]]> 2075129
Travel Writer for Brazil
QUALIFICATIONS REQUIRED
the ability to desert your entire previous life–including well-salaried office job, attractive girlfriend, and basic sanity for less than minimum wage
Attention to the skill to research northeastern Brazil, including transportation, restaurants, hotels, culture, customs, and language, while juggling sleep deprivation, nonstop nightlife, and excessive alcohol consumption
the imagination to write about places you never actually visit
utilizing persuasion, seduction, and threats, when necessary, to secure a place to stay for the evening once your pitiable advance has been (mis)spent
determination to overcome setbacks such as bankruptcy, disillusionment, and an ill-fated one-night stand with an Austrian flight attendant

As Kohnstamm comes to personal terms with each of these job requirements, he unveils the underside of the travel industry and its often-harrowing effect on writers, travelers, and the destinations themselves. Moreover, he invites us into his world of compromising and scandalous situations in one of the most exciting countries as he races against an impossible deadline.]]> 272 Thomas Kohnstamm 0307394654 Martine 2 Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?, a tell-all tale of the author's first tour of duty as a Lonely Planet researcher in Brazil. It seemed the ideal book for me -- a book about a guy who had the job I want, although I fully expected him to tell me it wasn't a dream job at all.

What I didn't realise when I bought the book was that Kohnstamm was the guy who seriously embarrassed Lonely Planet last year when he admitted in an interview to plagiarising whole sections of his LP guidebooks and writing about places he had never even visited, forcing Lonely Planet to embark on a major revision of the books and chapters he had written in an effort to control the damage done by his widely publicised interview. Clearly, Lonely Planet takes its credibility seriously. However, I suspect that Kohnstamm's modus operandi is rather more common among guidebook researchers than LP wishes to acknowledge, judging from the number of times I've visited hotels recommended by LP only to find that they had been closed for years...

Anyhow, being a travel junkie and aspiring Lonely Planet writer myself, I had high expectations for Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?. Unfortunately, it turned out that the author and I were a bad match. Kohnstamm, you see, is the kind of traveller I loathe -- the kind of backpacker who only seems to travel to get drunk, stoned and laid (usually in that order), who only goes to Cambodia to find one-dollar bags of weed, visits Northern Thailand and Northern Laos to smoke opium with the hill tribes, spends most of his time in India comparing the relative effects of ganja and bhang lassis, and, when told that I'm from Holland, will say with glazed-over eyes, 'Holland, eh? I've been to Amsterdam. I love Amsterdam,' only to answer my 'Really? Whereabouts in Amsterdam have you been?' with a shrug and a non-committal 'Can't remember. I was stoned all the time.' I've met too many guys like that, and at the risk of sounding like a goody two-shoes, they annoy me. I'm not sure whether that's because I'm secretly envious of their freewheeling ways or rather because I'm genuinely repulsed by their attempts to be cool and 'out there', but either way, I find them annoying. I guess I'm old-fashioned that way.

Sadly, Thomas Kohnstamm is the very stereotype of the dreaded sex-and-drugs-and-rock-'n'-roll tourist, something I didn't realise when I bought his book because the blurb conveniently failed to mention it (although in retrospect, the subtitle, 'A Swashbuckling Tale of High Adventure, Questionable Ethics and Professional Hedonism', should have been a bit of a give-away). Do Travel Writers Go to Hell? reads like a modern update of a Jack Kerouac or Hunter S. Thompson novel. Its first chapters contain so many references to sex, masturbation and binge-induced vomiting that I actually found it quite off-putting. The rest of the book is marginally better, but still, I don't think I'm wide of the mark when I say that one third of the narrative is about the drugs and alcohol the author ingests in Brazil, another third is about the women he beds (all gorgeous, obviously), and the remaining third is roughly divided between his attempts to sell ecstasy to fund the remainder of his trip (...) and his repeated vows to change his lifestyle and focus on the job at hand, only to be dragged to yet another booze-fuelled party half a page later. I'm sure this description sounds fabulous to people who like their travelogues Kerouac-style, but to my judgemental self, it got very tedious after a while. After just a few chapters of Kohnstamm's immature behaviour, I found myself wanting to read more about Brazil and its attractions, and less about the fuckheads with whom the author hung out during his trip (although I do admit that he drew those fuckheads very well). Kohnstamm's repeated assurances that he was basically doing an undoable job because Lonely Planet's deadlines are ridiculous and the pay is not nearly generous enough to cover all the expenses quickly began to grate on me, especially in the light of the long nights he apparently spent drinking and the long mornings he supposedly spent sleeping off his hangovers. I found myself increasingly annoyed with his constant excuses for not doing his job properly and with the weird decisions he kept making, such as staying in a flat for two weeks to have sex with a pretty prostitute when he was supposed to be researching hotels. So I guess you could say Kohnstamm wasn't the right author for me, nor I his intended audience. He's too much of a Hunter S. Thompson wannabe for me, and I'm not enough of a sleaze-loving frat boy to appreciate that kind of thing. I guess we were both to blame for the mismatch.

It's a pity Kohnstamm is such a shallow, self-congratulatory arsehole, because I suspect he's a decent writer underneath all the bluff and bravura. He has an engaging writing style, a decent sense of humour and a good ear for dialogue. Furthermore, he obviously has a brain on him, albeit an alcohol-addled one, and judging from some of the more outrageous descriptions in the book, he also has a lively imagination. When he is not bragging, whining, breaking half a dozen laws or generally being obnoxious, he actually makes some astute observations about travelling, guidebooks and being a guidebook contributor. He has insightful ideas on Lonely Planet users like myself (sheep who like to think of themselves as intrepid travellers but all end up doing exactly the same things), the way Lonely Planet has changed (and in some cases ruined) tourism in certain places, and the way Lonely Planet has sold out over the last fifteen years, a fact to which anyone who owns an LP guidebook from before the year 2000 can attest. He also provides some good insight into the compromised nature of travel writing, which tallies with my own experiences as a tour guide in China. Sadly, though, these observations are lost amidst increasingly repetitive tales of drunken debaucheries and sexual exploits. I'm sure the latter will appeal to many readers (judging from the staggering number of five-star reviews the book has received on Amazon USA, there is definitely a market for this sort of thing), but again, I would have preferred a less sleazy write-up of Kohnstamm's experiences in Brazil, one which told me more about travelling in Brazil and the job of being a travel writer and less about Thomas Kohnstamm's propensity to get himself into trouble. Call me holier than thou, call me a jealous wannabe travel writer, but really, this book could have been better, both as a travelogue and as a travel industry exposé.

2.5 stars, rounded down to two because I'm in an ungenerous mood.
]]> 3.20 2008 Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?: A Swashbuckling Tale of High Adventures, Questionable Ethics, and Professional Hedonism
author: Thomas Kohnstamm
name: Martine
average rating: 3.20
book published: 2008
rating: 2
read at: 2009/10/01
date added: 2009/10/04
shelves: blokey-books, disappointing, memoirs, non-fiction, travel-writing, north-american
review:
Every once in a while when I return from a holiday, I fantasise about becoming a travel writer-cum-photographer. At the risk of sounding like an insufferable show-off here, I think I've earned my dues in the travel world. I've visited 36 countries in five continents, including a few stints as a tour guide in China. I speak my languages, have a fairly strong stomach, can deal with grotty hotels as long as they're not too noisy, and am both a decent writer and a decent photographer, a combination which I think might be of some interest to publishers of guidebooks and travel magazines. Needless to say, I occasionally dream of becoming a Lonely Planet writer, so you can imagine how eagerly I snapped up Thomas Kohnstamm's Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?, a tell-all tale of the author's first tour of duty as a Lonely Planet researcher in Brazil. It seemed the ideal book for me -- a book about a guy who had the job I want, although I fully expected him to tell me it wasn't a dream job at all.

What I didn't realise when I bought the book was that Kohnstamm was the guy who seriously embarrassed Lonely Planet last year when he admitted in an interview to plagiarising whole sections of his LP guidebooks and writing about places he had never even visited, forcing Lonely Planet to embark on a major revision of the books and chapters he had written in an effort to control the damage done by his widely publicised interview. Clearly, Lonely Planet takes its credibility seriously. However, I suspect that Kohnstamm's modus operandi is rather more common among guidebook researchers than LP wishes to acknowledge, judging from the number of times I've visited hotels recommended by LP only to find that they had been closed for years...

Anyhow, being a travel junkie and aspiring Lonely Planet writer myself, I had high expectations for Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?. Unfortunately, it turned out that the author and I were a bad match. Kohnstamm, you see, is the kind of traveller I loathe -- the kind of backpacker who only seems to travel to get drunk, stoned and laid (usually in that order), who only goes to Cambodia to find one-dollar bags of weed, visits Northern Thailand and Northern Laos to smoke opium with the hill tribes, spends most of his time in India comparing the relative effects of ganja and bhang lassis, and, when told that I'm from Holland, will say with glazed-over eyes, 'Holland, eh? I've been to Amsterdam. I love Amsterdam,' only to answer my 'Really? Whereabouts in Amsterdam have you been?' with a shrug and a non-committal 'Can't remember. I was stoned all the time.' I've met too many guys like that, and at the risk of sounding like a goody two-shoes, they annoy me. I'm not sure whether that's because I'm secretly envious of their freewheeling ways or rather because I'm genuinely repulsed by their attempts to be cool and 'out there', but either way, I find them annoying. I guess I'm old-fashioned that way.

Sadly, Thomas Kohnstamm is the very stereotype of the dreaded sex-and-drugs-and-rock-'n'-roll tourist, something I didn't realise when I bought his book because the blurb conveniently failed to mention it (although in retrospect, the subtitle, 'A Swashbuckling Tale of High Adventure, Questionable Ethics and Professional Hedonism', should have been a bit of a give-away). Do Travel Writers Go to Hell? reads like a modern update of a Jack Kerouac or Hunter S. Thompson novel. Its first chapters contain so many references to sex, masturbation and binge-induced vomiting that I actually found it quite off-putting. The rest of the book is marginally better, but still, I don't think I'm wide of the mark when I say that one third of the narrative is about the drugs and alcohol the author ingests in Brazil, another third is about the women he beds (all gorgeous, obviously), and the remaining third is roughly divided between his attempts to sell ecstasy to fund the remainder of his trip (...) and his repeated vows to change his lifestyle and focus on the job at hand, only to be dragged to yet another booze-fuelled party half a page later. I'm sure this description sounds fabulous to people who like their travelogues Kerouac-style, but to my judgemental self, it got very tedious after a while. After just a few chapters of Kohnstamm's immature behaviour, I found myself wanting to read more about Brazil and its attractions, and less about the fuckheads with whom the author hung out during his trip (although I do admit that he drew those fuckheads very well). Kohnstamm's repeated assurances that he was basically doing an undoable job because Lonely Planet's deadlines are ridiculous and the pay is not nearly generous enough to cover all the expenses quickly began to grate on me, especially in the light of the long nights he apparently spent drinking and the long mornings he supposedly spent sleeping off his hangovers. I found myself increasingly annoyed with his constant excuses for not doing his job properly and with the weird decisions he kept making, such as staying in a flat for two weeks to have sex with a pretty prostitute when he was supposed to be researching hotels. So I guess you could say Kohnstamm wasn't the right author for me, nor I his intended audience. He's too much of a Hunter S. Thompson wannabe for me, and I'm not enough of a sleaze-loving frat boy to appreciate that kind of thing. I guess we were both to blame for the mismatch.

It's a pity Kohnstamm is such a shallow, self-congratulatory arsehole, because I suspect he's a decent writer underneath all the bluff and bravura. He has an engaging writing style, a decent sense of humour and a good ear for dialogue. Furthermore, he obviously has a brain on him, albeit an alcohol-addled one, and judging from some of the more outrageous descriptions in the book, he also has a lively imagination. When he is not bragging, whining, breaking half a dozen laws or generally being obnoxious, he actually makes some astute observations about travelling, guidebooks and being a guidebook contributor. He has insightful ideas on Lonely Planet users like myself (sheep who like to think of themselves as intrepid travellers but all end up doing exactly the same things), the way Lonely Planet has changed (and in some cases ruined) tourism in certain places, and the way Lonely Planet has sold out over the last fifteen years, a fact to which anyone who owns an LP guidebook from before the year 2000 can attest. He also provides some good insight into the compromised nature of travel writing, which tallies with my own experiences as a tour guide in China. Sadly, though, these observations are lost amidst increasingly repetitive tales of drunken debaucheries and sexual exploits. I'm sure the latter will appeal to many readers (judging from the staggering number of five-star reviews the book has received on Amazon USA, there is definitely a market for this sort of thing), but again, I would have preferred a less sleazy write-up of Kohnstamm's experiences in Brazil, one which told me more about travelling in Brazil and the job of being a travel writer and less about Thomas Kohnstamm's propensity to get himself into trouble. Call me holier than thou, call me a jealous wannabe travel writer, but really, this book could have been better, both as a travelogue and as a travel industry exposé.

2.5 stars, rounded down to two because I'm in an ungenerous mood.

]]> The King in the Window 7113 416 Adam Gopnik 0786838949 Martine 0 to-read 3.61 2005 The King in the Window
author: Adam Gopnik
name: Martine
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2009/10/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Shakespeare's Insults: Educating Your Wit]]> 32518 336 Wayne F. Hill 0517885395 Martine 3
Truly thou art damned, like an ill-roasted egg, all on one side.

God help thee, shallow man! God make incision in thee, thou art raw!

I will kill thee a hundred and fifty ways. Therefore tremble and depart.

Thou art poison to my blood.

O disloyal thing, thou heap'st a year's age on me!

Whore-son caterpillars!

Bacon-fed knaves!

How now, wool-sack, what mutter you?

Thou clay-brained guts, thou knotty-pated fool, thou whore-son obscene greasy tallow-catch!

I never see thy face but I think upon hell-fire.

You whore-son upright rabbit!

Wedded be thou to the hags of hell.

[Your:] horrid image doth unfix my hair.

You Banbury cheese!

You breathe in vain.

Thy lips rot off!

Were I like thee, I'd throw away myself.

Mend my company, take away thyself.

He has not so much brain as ear-wax.

Lady, you are the cruell'st she alive.

Fie, fie, what tediosity and disinsanity is here among ye!

Give me your hand. I can tell your fortune. You are a fool.

What's here? The portrait of a blinking idiot, presenting me a schedule!

Do thou amend thy face, and I'll amend my life.

[Your:] face is not worth sun-burning.

Thou wilt be as valiant as the wrathful dove, or most magnanimous mouse.

Thou disease of a friend!

His brain is as dry as the remainder biscuit after a voyage.

Methinks thou art a general offence and every man should beat thee.

Would thou wert clean enough to spit upon!

You are not worth the dust which the rude wind blows in your face.

I had rather be married to a death's head with a bone in his mouth.

[You are:] an index and prologue to the history of lust and foul thoughts.

More of your conversation would infect my brain.

Blasts and fogs upon thee!

I'll carbonado your shanks.

O thou side-piercing sight!

Answer, thou dead elm, answer.

The most infectious pestilence upon thee!

..........

Shakespeare's Insults: Educating Your Wit is, as you may have guessed, an index of Shakespeare's best insults. The book is divided into three parts:
(1) Lists of brief insults ('valiant flee', 'soused gurnet', 'foolish compounded clay-man', 'misbegotten divel', etc. -- excellent for name-calling purposes)
(2) Insults listed by play (in many cases, the best insults come from the lesser known plays)
(3) Longer insults for particular occasions, such as Foul Emanations (Shakespeare liked farting jokes!), Caterwauling, Windbaggery, etc.

Needless to say, there is some overlap between the various parts. Not all the insults listed are funny, and they do get a bit tedious after a while, but all the same I did have a good time skimming through the book on occasion, allowing myself to be entertained by and impressed with the tremendously varied profanities and curses the Bard came up with, and raising my eyebrows at some of the more baffling ones among them, such as 'Perge, perge; so it shall please you to abrogate scurrility' (?!?). My favourite of the lot was probably, 'You Banbury cheese!', which I can't see myself using in conversation any time soon but did give me a good chuckle.

My task for the next year is to leaf through the book every now and then and learn some of the more original insults and expletives by heart, to use when the occasion arises, so that I, too, can, as the editors of the book say, 'choose a richly coloured stone to throw, and in genuine generosity, make [my:] nemesis feel like somebody.' Because let's face it -- if someone were to use the insults listed above to your face, you'd feel special, right?

Either that, or you'd just laugh at them. Hard.]]> 3.89 1984 Shakespeare's Insults: Educating Your Wit
author: Wayne F. Hill
name: Martine
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1984
rating: 3
read at: 2009/03/01
date added: 2009/10/02
shelves: british, humour, sixteenth-century
review:
A few choice insults I learned from the Bard:

Truly thou art damned, like an ill-roasted egg, all on one side.

God help thee, shallow man! God make incision in thee, thou art raw!

I will kill thee a hundred and fifty ways. Therefore tremble and depart.

Thou art poison to my blood.

O disloyal thing, thou heap'st a year's age on me!

Whore-son caterpillars!

Bacon-fed knaves!

How now, wool-sack, what mutter you?

Thou clay-brained guts, thou knotty-pated fool, thou whore-son obscene greasy tallow-catch!

I never see thy face but I think upon hell-fire.

You whore-son upright rabbit!

Wedded be thou to the hags of hell.

[Your:] horrid image doth unfix my hair.

You Banbury cheese!

You breathe in vain.

Thy lips rot off!

Were I like thee, I'd throw away myself.

Mend my company, take away thyself.

He has not so much brain as ear-wax.

Lady, you are the cruell'st she alive.

Fie, fie, what tediosity and disinsanity is here among ye!

Give me your hand. I can tell your fortune. You are a fool.

What's here? The portrait of a blinking idiot, presenting me a schedule!

Do thou amend thy face, and I'll amend my life.

[Your:] face is not worth sun-burning.

Thou wilt be as valiant as the wrathful dove, or most magnanimous mouse.

Thou disease of a friend!

His brain is as dry as the remainder biscuit after a voyage.

Methinks thou art a general offence and every man should beat thee.

Would thou wert clean enough to spit upon!

You are not worth the dust which the rude wind blows in your face.

I had rather be married to a death's head with a bone in his mouth.

[You are:] an index and prologue to the history of lust and foul thoughts.

More of your conversation would infect my brain.

Blasts and fogs upon thee!

I'll carbonado your shanks.

O thou side-piercing sight!

Answer, thou dead elm, answer.

The most infectious pestilence upon thee!

..........

Shakespeare's Insults: Educating Your Wit is, as you may have guessed, an index of Shakespeare's best insults. The book is divided into three parts:
(1) Lists of brief insults ('valiant flee', 'soused gurnet', 'foolish compounded clay-man', 'misbegotten divel', etc. -- excellent for name-calling purposes)
(2) Insults listed by play (in many cases, the best insults come from the lesser known plays)
(3) Longer insults for particular occasions, such as Foul Emanations (Shakespeare liked farting jokes!), Caterwauling, Windbaggery, etc.

Needless to say, there is some overlap between the various parts. Not all the insults listed are funny, and they do get a bit tedious after a while, but all the same I did have a good time skimming through the book on occasion, allowing myself to be entertained by and impressed with the tremendously varied profanities and curses the Bard came up with, and raising my eyebrows at some of the more baffling ones among them, such as 'Perge, perge; so it shall please you to abrogate scurrility' (?!?). My favourite of the lot was probably, 'You Banbury cheese!', which I can't see myself using in conversation any time soon but did give me a good chuckle.

My task for the next year is to leaf through the book every now and then and learn some of the more original insults and expletives by heart, to use when the occasion arises, so that I, too, can, as the editors of the book say, 'choose a richly coloured stone to throw, and in genuine generosity, make [my:] nemesis feel like somebody.' Because let's face it -- if someone were to use the insults listed above to your face, you'd feel special, right?

Either that, or you'd just laugh at them. Hard.
]]> Tender is the Night 321448 Tender Is the Night is the tragic romance of the young actress Rosemary Hoyt and the stylish American couple Dick and Nicole Diver. A brilliant young psychiatrist at the time of his marriage, Dick is both husband and doctor to Nicole, whose wealth goads him into a lifestyle not his own, and whose growing strength highlights Dick's harrowing demise. A profound study of the romantic concept of character, Tender Is the Night is lyrical, expansive, and hauntingly evocative.]]> 352 F. Scott Fitzgerald 0140180753 Martine 3
Those were some of the questions I pondered after reading Tender Is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald's last finished novel, and possibly his most autobiographical one. Set in France and Italy in the 1920s, it tells the story of two wealthy American expats, Dick and Nicole Diver (largely based on the author and his wife Zelda), who seem to others the most glamorous couple ever, 'as fine-looking a couple as could be found in Paris', but are finding their private lives increasingly less glamorous. We first see the couple through the eyes of Rosemary Hoyt, a young and naive American actress holidaying in Europe. Rosemary falls madly in love with suave Dick, but also admires angelic Nicole. After about 130 pages during which Rosemary hangs out with the Divers and nearly embarks on an affair with Dick, the narrative stops and goes back in time to tell the story of Dick and Nicole's marriage, which is considerably more complicated than Rosemary realises. Nicole, it turns out, has a history of mental illness, and Dick is both her husband and the doctor treating her -- a recipe for disaster, obviously.

Being a tale of needy people, broken relationships, loss of purpose and wasted potential, Tender Is the Night is quite a depressing read, and one's appreciation of it largely depends on one's tolerance for that kind of thing. If you like your books bleak and tragic, chances are you'll appreciate Tender Is the Night. If not, you might want to steer clear of it.

I generally love a good tragedy, but I confess I wasn't overly impressed with Tender Is the Night. For a book which has garnered so many rave reviews, I found it remarkably flawed. Fitzgerald himself seems to have somewhat agreed with me. Despite referring to Tender Is the Night as his masterpiece and being shocked by its lack of critical and commercial success, he began reconstructing it a few years before his death, placing the flashback chapters at the beginning and making all the textual alterations required by this change. However, he died before he could finish the project, or perhaps he abandoned the project as not worth completing (no one seems to know for sure). A friend of his, Malcolm Cowley, then completed the revision, and for years this was the standard edition of the book. However, the Cowley version has fallen into scholarly disfavour (or so Penguin informs me), and several publishers, Penguin included, now use the first edition, the one that Fitzgerald thought needed revision. Apparently, there are no fewer than seventeen versions of the novel extant, which says much about how satisfied Fitzgerald was with his own work. My guess? Not very much.

I read a version based on the first edition of the book, and to be honest, I can see why Fitzgerald felt it needed some work. Tender Is the Night felt very disjointed to me. To a certain extent, this was because of the aforementioned non-linear structure, which felt a bit jarring to me. However, as far as I'm concerned, that is not the book's only problem, nor even its biggest one. What most annoyed me was the way in which the perspective keeps shifting. Fitzgerald uses an omniscient narrator in Tender Is the Night, but not consistently so; the story is always written from a certain character's perspective. Sometimes the perspective is Rosemary's, sometimes it's Dick or Nicole's; even the minor characters have stretches of the story told from their perspectives, often on the same page as a main character's perspective. To me, these shifts in point of view often felt haphazard, not to mention a little jarring. I didn't think they were particularly effective, either, as they hardly build on each other and don't provide any information that couldn't be gleaned from a 'regular' omniscient narrator. I may be in a minority here, but I think the book would have benefited from a more consistent approach to perspective.

The story itself is a bit haphazard, as well. It occasionally drags, it has little plot, and there are quite a few scenes and storylines which don't really go anywhere. Among several other seemingly unlikely scenes, the book contains a murder, a shooting and a duel, none of which is fully integrated into the story, and none of which is given proper significance. Scenes are introduced and then left so randomly that you have to wonder why Fitzgerald bothered to include them at all. At the risk of being unkind and judgemental, I guess that's what being an alcoholic will do for an author: it gives you wild ideas, but prevents you from carrying them out properly.

Which brings me to the characterisation. I'll probably get a lot of flak for this, but I felt that Fitzgerald's vaunted characterisation was a bit 'off' in this novel. Many of the minor characters are sketchily drawn, whereas the main characters are described well (sometimes brilliantly so), but never properly explained. While Fitzgerald does a good (and occasionally excellent) job of sharing his protagonists' feelings, he hardly ever bothers to explain their motivations. This particularly bothered me in the parts written from Dick Diver's point of view, as Dick is supposed to be a psychiatrist. By rights, he should be analysing people actions and motivations all the time, and asking lots of questions. However, Dick hardly ever asks questions. He does not even ask himself questions. He never wonders why he is so drawn to young girls, or what it is in him that causes him to need to be their saviour. He just observes other people in a way of which any intelligent person (trained psychologist or not) would be capable, and then describes their behaviour in a few felicitous phrases. For this and other reasons, I didn't buy Dick Diver as a psychiatrist. Fitzgerald may have read up on psychology (and undoubtedly learned a lot from the doctors who treated his own wife), but I never found his alter ego convincing as a psychiatrist, let alone a brilliant psychiatrist. To me, Dick has 'writer' written all over him.

It's a pity I kept finding such flaws, because Tender Is the Night obviously had the potential to be amazing. It has all the right ingredients: interesting (albeit snobbish and bored) characters, powerful themes, evocative (albeit frequently vague) writing, you name it. And the story certainly doesn't lack in pathos. It is quite harrowing to watch Dick Diver, a supposedly brilliant and popular man who never lives up to his potential and is increasingly torn asunder by money, alcoholism and his failed marriage to a mentally ill woman, go to pieces, becoming, in his own words, 'the Black Death' ('I don't seem to bring people happiness any more'). The fact that this was Fitzgerald writing about himself, about his own frustrations and shattered dreams, adds considerable poignancy to the reading experience. Even so, Tender Is the Night ended up leaving me fairly cold, as I simply didn't care for Dick enough to be genuinely moved by his descent into failure. While others may find Dick a swell guy, I myself found his complacency and lack of purpose grating, his alcoholism exasperating, and his brilliance skin-deep. I seem to be alone in this opinion, but I stand by it.

In summary, then, I enjoyed and admired aspects of Tender Is the Night, but I don't think they add up to a great whole. While I appreciate Fitzgerald's brutal honesty and the masterful way in which he evokes mutual dependence, isolation and frustration, I can't shake off the feeling that the book could have been much better than it ended up being. And this pains me, as I hate wasted potential as much as Fitzgerald himself seems to have done. As it is, Tender Is the Night is in my opinion not just a book about wasted potential, but an example of wasted potential. It is fitting, I suppose, but no less disappointing for that.

3.5 stars, rounded down to three because I really didn't like it as much as many of the books I have given four stars lately.
]]> 3.66 1934 Tender is the Night
author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
name: Martine
average rating: 3.66
book published: 1934
rating: 3
read at: 2009/06/01
date added: 2009/09/29
shelves: early-twentieth-century, family-drama, modern-fiction, north-american, psychological-drama, disappointing
review:
How is one to feel about a protagonist who frequently displays signs of elitism, sexism, bigotry and homophobia, finds himself worryingly attracted to young girls, has no goal in life except to make himself useful to damsels in distress, and drinks away his career and marriage, ending up a mere shadow of his former self? Is one supposed to regard him as a tragic hero? Is one to sympathise with him? And if one does sympathise with him, is that because of the way he was written, or rather because we are aware that he is a thinly veiled version of the author himself, a giant of early-twentieth American literature?

Those were some of the questions I pondered after reading Tender Is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald's last finished novel, and possibly his most autobiographical one. Set in France and Italy in the 1920s, it tells the story of two wealthy American expats, Dick and Nicole Diver (largely based on the author and his wife Zelda), who seem to others the most glamorous couple ever, 'as fine-looking a couple as could be found in Paris', but are finding their private lives increasingly less glamorous. We first see the couple through the eyes of Rosemary Hoyt, a young and naive American actress holidaying in Europe. Rosemary falls madly in love with suave Dick, but also admires angelic Nicole. After about 130 pages during which Rosemary hangs out with the Divers and nearly embarks on an affair with Dick, the narrative stops and goes back in time to tell the story of Dick and Nicole's marriage, which is considerably more complicated than Rosemary realises. Nicole, it turns out, has a history of mental illness, and Dick is both her husband and the doctor treating her -- a recipe for disaster, obviously.

Being a tale of needy people, broken relationships, loss of purpose and wasted potential, Tender Is the Night is quite a depressing read, and one's appreciation of it largely depends on one's tolerance for that kind of thing. If you like your books bleak and tragic, chances are you'll appreciate Tender Is the Night. If not, you might want to steer clear of it.

I generally love a good tragedy, but I confess I wasn't overly impressed with Tender Is the Night. For a book which has garnered so many rave reviews, I found it remarkably flawed. Fitzgerald himself seems to have somewhat agreed with me. Despite referring to Tender Is the Night as his masterpiece and being shocked by its lack of critical and commercial success, he began reconstructing it a few years before his death, placing the flashback chapters at the beginning and making all the textual alterations required by this change. However, he died before he could finish the project, or perhaps he abandoned the project as not worth completing (no one seems to know for sure). A friend of his, Malcolm Cowley, then completed the revision, and for years this was the standard edition of the book. However, the Cowley version has fallen into scholarly disfavour (or so Penguin informs me), and several publishers, Penguin included, now use the first edition, the one that Fitzgerald thought needed revision. Apparently, there are no fewer than seventeen versions of the novel extant, which says much about how satisfied Fitzgerald was with his own work. My guess? Not very much.

I read a version based on the first edition of the book, and to be honest, I can see why Fitzgerald felt it needed some work. Tender Is the Night felt very disjointed to me. To a certain extent, this was because of the aforementioned non-linear structure, which felt a bit jarring to me. However, as far as I'm concerned, that is not the book's only problem, nor even its biggest one. What most annoyed me was the way in which the perspective keeps shifting. Fitzgerald uses an omniscient narrator in Tender Is the Night, but not consistently so; the story is always written from a certain character's perspective. Sometimes the perspective is Rosemary's, sometimes it's Dick or Nicole's; even the minor characters have stretches of the story told from their perspectives, often on the same page as a main character's perspective. To me, these shifts in point of view often felt haphazard, not to mention a little jarring. I didn't think they were particularly effective, either, as they hardly build on each other and don't provide any information that couldn't be gleaned from a 'regular' omniscient narrator. I may be in a minority here, but I think the book would have benefited from a more consistent approach to perspective.

The story itself is a bit haphazard, as well. It occasionally drags, it has little plot, and there are quite a few scenes and storylines which don't really go anywhere. Among several other seemingly unlikely scenes, the book contains a murder, a shooting and a duel, none of which is fully integrated into the story, and none of which is given proper significance. Scenes are introduced and then left so randomly that you have to wonder why Fitzgerald bothered to include them at all. At the risk of being unkind and judgemental, I guess that's what being an alcoholic will do for an author: it gives you wild ideas, but prevents you from carrying them out properly.

Which brings me to the characterisation. I'll probably get a lot of flak for this, but I felt that Fitzgerald's vaunted characterisation was a bit 'off' in this novel. Many of the minor characters are sketchily drawn, whereas the main characters are described well (sometimes brilliantly so), but never properly explained. While Fitzgerald does a good (and occasionally excellent) job of sharing his protagonists' feelings, he hardly ever bothers to explain their motivations. This particularly bothered me in the parts written from Dick Diver's point of view, as Dick is supposed to be a psychiatrist. By rights, he should be analysing people actions and motivations all the time, and asking lots of questions. However, Dick hardly ever asks questions. He does not even ask himself questions. He never wonders why he is so drawn to young girls, or what it is in him that causes him to need to be their saviour. He just observes other people in a way of which any intelligent person (trained psychologist or not) would be capable, and then describes their behaviour in a few felicitous phrases. For this and other reasons, I didn't buy Dick Diver as a psychiatrist. Fitzgerald may have read up on psychology (and undoubtedly learned a lot from the doctors who treated his own wife), but I never found his alter ego convincing as a psychiatrist, let alone a brilliant psychiatrist. To me, Dick has 'writer' written all over him.

It's a pity I kept finding such flaws, because Tender Is the Night obviously had the potential to be amazing. It has all the right ingredients: interesting (albeit snobbish and bored) characters, powerful themes, evocative (albeit frequently vague) writing, you name it. And the story certainly doesn't lack in pathos. It is quite harrowing to watch Dick Diver, a supposedly brilliant and popular man who never lives up to his potential and is increasingly torn asunder by money, alcoholism and his failed marriage to a mentally ill woman, go to pieces, becoming, in his own words, 'the Black Death' ('I don't seem to bring people happiness any more'). The fact that this was Fitzgerald writing about himself, about his own frustrations and shattered dreams, adds considerable poignancy to the reading experience. Even so, Tender Is the Night ended up leaving me fairly cold, as I simply didn't care for Dick enough to be genuinely moved by his descent into failure. While others may find Dick a swell guy, I myself found his complacency and lack of purpose grating, his alcoholism exasperating, and his brilliance skin-deep. I seem to be alone in this opinion, but I stand by it.

In summary, then, I enjoyed and admired aspects of Tender Is the Night, but I don't think they add up to a great whole. While I appreciate Fitzgerald's brutal honesty and the masterful way in which he evokes mutual dependence, isolation and frustration, I can't shake off the feeling that the book could have been much better than it ended up being. And this pains me, as I hate wasted potential as much as Fitzgerald himself seems to have done. As it is, Tender Is the Night is in my opinion not just a book about wasted potential, but an example of wasted potential. It is fitting, I suppose, but no less disappointing for that.

3.5 stars, rounded down to three because I really didn't like it as much as many of the books I have given four stars lately.

]]> <![CDATA[The Year of the Flood (MaddAddam, #2)]]> 6080337
Have others survived? Ren's bioartist friend Amanda? Zeb, her eco-fighter stepfather? Her onetime lover, Jimmy? Or the murderous Painballers, survivors of the mutual-elimination Painball prison? Not to mention the shadowy, corrupt policing force of the ruling powers...

Meanwhile, gene-spliced life forms are proliferating: the lion/lamb blends, the Mo'hair sheep with human hair, the pigs with human brain tissue. As Adam One and his intrepid hemp-clad band make their way through this strange new world, Ren and Toby will have to decide on their next move. They can't stay locked away...

By turns dark, tender, violent, thoughtful, and uneasily hilarious, The Year of the Flood is Atwood at her most brilliant and inventive.]]> 431 Margaret Atwood 0385528779 Martine 0 to-read 4.06 2009 The Year of the Flood (MaddAddam, #2)
author: Margaret Atwood
name: Martine
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2009/09/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Unconsoled 40117
Ishiguro's extraordinary and original study of a man whose life has accelerated beyond his control was met on publication by consternation, vilification � and the highest praise.]]> 535 Kazuo Ishiguro 057122539X Martine 0 to-read 3.59 1995 The Unconsoled
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Martine
average rating: 3.59
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2009/09/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Scarlet Pimpernel 136116 182 Emmuska Orczy 1576469239 Martine 0 to-read 4.07 1905 The Scarlet Pimpernel
author: Emmuska Orczy
name: Martine
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1905
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2009/09/26
shelves: to-read
review:

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