en-US Sun, 26 Aug 2018 19:29:25 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 265132 364 A.B. Yehoshua 0156494477 Francesca 5 best-reads
Yehoshua wrote book in an extremely interesting style that is sophisticated and engaging at the same time.

The story is simple. A man moved to the US years before leaving his family in Israel. He is now back to get a divorce from the wife to be able to remarry.

It is all about the characters. The feelings: the feeling of being trapped. The feeling of panicking for getting older. the feeling of being young and confused. of being sick and afraid. All those feelings jump at you from every page. It is an amazing book. ]]> 3.99 1982
author: A.B. Yehoshua
name: Francesca
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1982
rating: 5
read at: 2006/01/01
date added: 2018/08/26
shelves: best-reads
review:
This is my favorite Yehoshua book and one of my all-time favorites.

Yehoshua wrote book in an extremely interesting style that is sophisticated and engaging at the same time.

The story is simple. A man moved to the US years before leaving his family in Israel. He is now back to get a divorce from the wife to be able to remarry.

It is all about the characters. The feelings: the feeling of being trapped. The feeling of panicking for getting older. the feeling of being young and confused. of being sick and afraid. All those feelings jump at you from every page. It is an amazing book.
]]> 65251 368 A.B. Yehoshua 0156539128 Francesca 4 4.02 1977
author: A.B. Yehoshua
name: Francesca
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1977
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2008/01/03
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review:

]]> 1821870 272 Christopher Ross 0306815680 Francesca 3 3.75 2006
author: Christopher Ross
name: Francesca
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2008/01/03
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]]> 781506 Librarian note: An alternative cover for this ISBN can be found here.

Yukio Mishima’s Runaway Horses is the second novel in his masterful tetralogy, The Sea of Fertility . Again we encounter Shigekuni Honda, who narrates this epic tale of what he believes are the successive reincarnations of his childhood friend Kiyoaki Matsugae.
Ěý
In 1932, Shigeuki Honda has become a judge in Osaka.Ěý Convinced that a young rightist revolutionary, Isao, is the reincarnation of his friend Kiyoaki , Honda commits himself to saving the youth from an untimely death. Isao, driven to patriotic fanaticism by a father who instilled in him the ethos of the ancient samurai, organizes a violent plot against the new industrialists who he believes are usurping the Emperor’s rightful power and threatening the very integrity of the nation. Runaway Horses is the chronicle of a conspiracy â€� a novel about the roots and nature of Japanese fanaticism in the years that led to war.]]> 421 Yukio Mishima 0679722408 Francesca 2 4.18 1969
author: Yukio Mishima
name: Francesca
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1969
rating: 2
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date added: 2008/01/03
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]]> 464261
It is 1912 in Tokyo, and the hermetic world of the ancient aristocracy is being breached for the first time by outsiders—rich provincial families unburdened by tradition, whose money and vitality make them formidable contenders for social and political power. Shigekuni Honda, an aspiring lawyer and his childhood friend, Kiyoaki Matsugae, are the sons of two such families. As they come of age amidst the growing tensions between old and new, Kiyoaki is plagued by his simultaneous love for and loathing of the spirited young woman Ayakura Satoko. But Kiyoaki’s true feelings only become apparent when her sudden engagement to a royal prince shows him the magnitude of his passion—and leads to a love affair both doomed and inevitable.]]> 389 Yukio Mishima 0679722416 Francesca 3 I like the elegance of mishima's storytelling. He is incredibly elegant and that is very attractive to me in a book. However, his characters are not as exciting as his style (to me).

I liked this book when I read it but I am kind of over it. ]]> 4.20 1967
author: Yukio Mishima
name: Francesca
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1967
rating: 3
read at: 2004/01/01
date added: 2008/01/03
shelves:
review:
This is my favorite mishima. The first of the the four books in his cycle.
I like the elegance of mishima's storytelling. He is incredibly elegant and that is very attractive to me in a book. However, his characters are not as exciting as his style (to me).

I liked this book when I read it but I am kind of over it.
]]> 34460
Ěý
At once savagely funny and timorously exact in its portrayal of sexual enthrallment, Quicksand is “beautifully and mysteriously contrived.”� Newsday]]> 224 Jun'ichirō Tanizaki 0679760229 Francesca 4 3.68 1928
author: Jun'ichirĹŤ Tanizaki
name: Francesca
average rating: 3.68
book published: 1928
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2008/01/03
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review:

]]> 980783
Translated from the Japanese by Howard Hibbett.]]> 192 Jun'ichirĹŤ Tanizaki 0679730230 Francesca 5 best-reads
Tanizaki is a master in story telling.

His central point to me is around the impossibility to create real, deep, human connections and be able to establish a channel of communication: you feel that no matter how hard you try to connect to another human being, you are destined to fail.

Although we should know better, we will use tricks and deception and in the end we will have distorted and ruined any chance we had of creating a real and honest relationship...at that point, he goes even deeper. Is it really just communication or it is impossible for us to communicate because objectivity does not exist and reality is flawed by eyes that look at it?

Tanikazi characters always feel old (of advanced age) to me even when they are not based on their age (although this book is about an older couple). Their impossibility and the fact that they are trapped in their behavior and tricks and ideas makes them old.]]> 3.51 1956
author: Jun'ichirĹŤ Tanizaki
name: Francesca
average rating: 3.51
book published: 1956
rating: 5
read at: 2003/01/01
date added: 2008/01/03
shelves: best-reads
review:
This is my favorite Tanizaki book.

Tanizaki is a master in story telling.

His central point to me is around the impossibility to create real, deep, human connections and be able to establish a channel of communication: you feel that no matter how hard you try to connect to another human being, you are destined to fail.

Although we should know better, we will use tricks and deception and in the end we will have distorted and ruined any chance we had of creating a real and honest relationship...at that point, he goes even deeper. Is it really just communication or it is impossible for us to communicate because objectivity does not exist and reality is flawed by eyes that look at it?

Tanikazi characters always feel old (of advanced age) to me even when they are not based on their age (although this book is about an older couple). Their impossibility and the fact that they are trapped in their behavior and tricks and ideas makes them old.
]]> 34462 Ěý
When twenty-eight-year-old Joji first lays eyes upon the teenage waitress Naomi, he is instantly smitten by her exotic, almost Western appearance. Determined to transform her into the perfect wife and to whisk her away from the seamy underbelly of post-World War I Tokyo, Joji adopts and ultimately marries Naomi, paying for English and music lessons that promise to mold her into his ideal companion. But as she grows older, Joji discovers that Naomi is far from the naïve girl of his fantasies. And, in Tanizaki’s masterpiece of lurid obsession, passion quickly descends into comically helpless masochism.]]> 237 Jun'ichirō Tanizaki 0375724745 Francesca 4 3.70 1924
author: Jun'ichirĹŤ Tanizaki
name: Francesca
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1924
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2008/01/03
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]]> 194642 202 Jun'ichirĹŤ Tanizaki 0679752692 Francesca 4 3.66 1928
author: Jun'ichirĹŤ Tanizaki
name: Francesca
average rating: 3.66
book published: 1928
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2008/01/03
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review:

]]> 4929 Kafka on the Shore, a tour de force of metaphysical reality, is powered by two remarkable characters: a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home either to escape a gruesome oedipal prophecy or to search for his long-missing mother and sister; and an aging simpleton called Nakata, who never recovered from a wartime affliction and now is drawn toward Kafka for reasons that, like the most basic activities of daily life, he cannot fathom. Their odyssey, as mysterious to them as it is to us, is enriched throughout by vivid accomplices and mesmerizing events. Cats and people carry on conversations, a ghostlike pimp employs a Hegel-quoting prostitute, a forest harbors soldiers apparently unaged since World War II, and rainstorms of fish (and worse) fall from the sky. There is a brutal murder, with the identity of both victim and perpetrator a riddle—yet this, along with everything else, is eventually answered, just as the entwined destinies of Kafka and Nakata are gradually revealed, with one escaping his fate entirely and the other given a fresh start on his own.]]> 467 Haruki Murakami 1400079276 Francesca 4 4.14 2002
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Francesca
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2002
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2008/01/03
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review:

]]> 284066
In a Tokyo suburb a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife's missing cat. Soon he finds himself looking for his wife as well in a netherworld that lies beneath the placid surface of Tokyo. As these searches intersect, Okada encounters a bizarre group of allies and antagonists: a psychic prostitute; a malevolent yet mediagenic politician; a cheerfully morbid sixteen-year-old-girl; and an aging war veteran who has been permanently changed by the hideous things he witnessed during Japan's forgotten campaign in Manchuria.

Gripping, prophetic, suffused with comedy and menace, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a tour de force equal in scope to the masterpieces of Mishima and Pynchon.]]> 607 Haruki Murakami Francesca 3 currently-reading
There is one quote in this book that I will keep with me for a long time. It resonates very deeply with me. it goes something like: "there are times when you need to climb up. Then you need to find the highest montain and climb it. There are times when you need to climb down. Then you need to fins the deepest well and climb down. There are times when you need to stay still. In those times, the best thing to do is to stay still."]]> 4.14 1994
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Francesca
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1994
rating: 3
read at: 2007/01/01
date added: 2008/01/03
shelves: currently-reading
review:
I just finished this one. Great story and great characters.

There is one quote in this book that I will keep with me for a long time. It resonates very deeply with me. it goes something like: "there are times when you need to climb up. Then you need to find the highest montain and climb it. There are times when you need to climb down. Then you need to fins the deepest well and climb down. There are times when you need to stay still. In those times, the best thing to do is to stay still."
]]> 51068 217 Dashiell Hammett 0679722645 Francesca 4 I just recently moved my office to the building where Sam Spade office was (in the movie) and that prompted me to take the book again in my hands. And, I was laughing again as soon as I started to read...]]> 3.74 1930
author: Dashiell Hammett
name: Francesca
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1930
rating: 4
read at: 2004/01/01
date added: 2008/01/03
shelves:
review:
This is a fun, fun detective book with a dark side. just a classic. I have read it a few times and I always laugh. An easy , fun read.
I just recently moved my office to the building where Sam Spade office was (in the movie) and that prompted me to take the book again in my hands. And, I was laughing again as soon as I started to read...
]]> 65291
The Same Sea is Amos Oz’s most adventurous and inventive book, a novel of lyrical beauty and narrative power. We meet the middle-aged Albert; his wife, whom he has lost to cancer; his prodigal son, who wanders the mountains of Tibet hoping to find himself; and his son’s young girlfriend, with whom Albert becomes infatuated. The author himself receives phone calls from his creations, criticizing him for his portraits of them. A fever dream of chaos and order, love and eroticism, loyalty and betrayal.

“A prose poem . . . at once melancholic and sensual.� � The New Yorker]]> 216 Amos Oz 0156013126 Francesca 4 3.83 1999
author: Amos Oz
name: Francesca
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1999
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2008/01/03
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]]> 114741
Fima lives in Jerusalem, but feels he ought to be somewhere else. In his life he has had secret love affairs, good ideas, and written a book of poems that aroused expectations. He has thought about the purpose of the universe and where the country lost its way. He has felt longings of all sorts, and the constant desire to pen a new chapter. And here he is now, in his early fifties in a shabby apartment on a gloomy wet morning, engaged in a humiliating struggle to release his shirt from the zipper of his fly. With wit and insight, Amos Oz portrays a man—and a generation—dreaming noble dreams but doing nothing.

“One of Oz’s most memorable fictional creations . . . Fima is a cross between Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya and Joyce’s Leopold Bloom.� � Washington Post]]> 336 Amos Oz 0156001438 Francesca 5 Any Amos Oz (fiction) is interesting for this reason, but Fima is extraordinary. ]]> 3.76 1991
author: Amos Oz
name: Francesca
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1991
rating: 5
read at: 2006/01/01
date added: 2008/01/03
shelves:
review:
This is my favorite Amos Oz book and the first one I read. This is a great book. Amos Oz has an incredible talent to paint simple stories with incredible depth and cut open the life of his characters for us to go deep in their soul.
Any Amos Oz (fiction) is interesting for this reason, but Fima is extraordinary.
]]> 880519
“[To Know a Woman has] the powerful undertow of myth . . . A rich and affecting novel.� � New York Times

Following the accidental death of his wife, Israeli secret service agent Yoel Ravid retires to the suburbs with his daughter, mother, and mother-in-law. After a lifetime of uncovering other people’s secrets, he is forced to look back on his the desolate enigma of his wife’s life and death, his years of service to the state, the riddle of his daughter’s behavior. Amos Oz infuses Yoel’s story with poetry, humor, and a vivid sense of the madness inherent in everyday existence.

“His language is Hebrew, his setting Israel, his message is universal.� � Boston Jewish Times]]> 272 Amos Oz 0156906805 Francesca 4 3.41 1989
author: Amos Oz
name: Francesca
average rating: 3.41
book published: 1989
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2008/01/03
shelves:
review:

]]>