Blog For Free!
Archives
Home
2005 October
2005 August
2005 July
2005 June
2005 April
2005 March
2005 February
2005 January
2004 December
2004 November
2004 October
2004 September
My Links
My Bookcrossing page
A Day of Life- online blog
Archives for January 2005: I put a link here as there appear to be problems with archives
tBlog
My Profile
Send tMail
My tFriends
My Images
Sponsored
Blog
|
| New Book |
| 10.31.04 (12:20 pm) [edit] |
I bought a new book today,as if I don`t have enough at home, he-he-he!:-))
"The Go-Between" by L.P.Hartley.It is a story abouta 60 years old man who
remembers his childhood and the time when,as a young boy,he was involved in
a love relationship of a friend,acting as a messenger between his friend and
the girl.This strange connection marks the end of his childhood and the entrance
into adulthood.
I hope this book is going to get me out of the reading slumber I`m in right now.
Sometimes,when I try too hard to read for bookrings or rays and cannot get
interested into the books I`m reading,I lose my willingness to read.Then a nice
book comes and wakes me up:-)).
|
|
|
| |
| Haven`t read a lot for a while... |
| 10.30.04 (3:09 pm) [edit] |
Had a kind of gap in my reading these weeks...that`s why I didn`t post
anything here for some time. I managed to finish a bookring book,
"Arcobaleno" by Banana Yoshimoto and am reading very slowly "London Fields"
by Martin Amis.
I have wonderful books which await me...but I have to read more to have
time for them!
|
|
|
| |
| Finished "Clara Callan" |
| 10.16.04 (6:02 pm) [edit] |
The nice feeling during the reading was preserved until the end.Clara is an interesting
character-a woman,so tied up with traditions and village morals,ends up as a kind of scandalous figure.I was disappointed,however,that she didn`t carry on in the same spirit and agreed with the judgement of the people.
The style was very good- simple but loaded with lot of meanings and subtle descriptions.
|
|
|
| |
| New Reading: "Clara Callan" by Robert Wright |
| 10.13.04 (9:15 am) [edit] |
I was lucky to pick up another very good reading soon after finishing Auster.
This time the book is written by a Canadian writer,Robert Wright.I have read a bunch of
books by Canadian writers so far,and my opinion about Canadian literature is very high!
This one just contributes to it.
Just a brief synopsis: The beginning of the 20th century, the 30s.
Clara and Nora are two sisters.Clara is more contemplative,moderate,re served;
Nora is more extravagant,modern,ambiti ous.Clara works as a teacher in a
Canadian village where she had lived all her life. Nora moves to New York
and starts making a career as a radio actress.Inspite of their different temperaments
and characters, the sister are deeply bound together.The book is written in the form of excerpts from Clara`s diary, as well as the letters she exchanges with her sister.The style is very elegant-economic,yet at the same time eloquent. R.Wright manages to show to us Clara`s inner world,her fears,her good soul,aspiring for something more which she even cannot name what it is.The relationship between the two sister is very well described,and sounds psychologically true. I agree wholeheartedly with the reviews of the book which say that the best compliment given to the author should be that you can hardly believe it was written by man,not by woman! He manages to create full illusion that in fact,we are reading a woman`s diary.
|
|
|
| |
| Quote from "Invention of Solitude" |
| 10.11.04 (6:28 am) [edit] |
[page136]
The Book of Memory. Book Nine.
For most of his adult life, he has earned his living by translating the books of other writers. He sits at his desk reading the book in French and then picks up his pen and writes the same book in English. It is both the same book and not the same book, and the strangeness of this activity has never failed to impress him. Every book is an image of solitude. It is a tangible object that one can pick up, put down, open, and close, and its words represent many months, if not many years, of one man's solitude, so that with each word one reads in a book one might say to himself that he is confronting a particle of that solitude. A man sits alone in a room and writes. Whether the book speaks of loneliness or companionship, it is necessarily a product of solitude. A. sits down in his own room to translate another man's book, and it is as though he were entering that man's solitude and making it his own. But surely that is impossible. For once a solitude has been breached, once a solitude has been taken on by another, it is no longer solitude, but a kind of companionship. Even though there is only one man in the room, there are two. A. imagines himself as a kind of ghost of that other man, who is both there and not there, and whose book is both the same and not the same as the one he is translating. Therefore, he tells himself, it is possible to be alone and not alone at the same moment.
A word becomes another word, a thing becomes another thing. In this way, he tells himself, it works in the same way that memory does. He imagines an immense Babel inside him. There is a text, and it translates itself into an infinite number of languages. Sentences spill out of him at the speed of thought, and each word comes from a different language, a thousand tongues that clamor inside him at once, the din of it echoing through a maze of rooms, corridors, and stairways, hundreds of stories high. He repeats. In the space of memory, everything is both itself and something else. And then it dawns on him that everything he is trying to record in The Book of Memory, everything he has written so far, is no more than the translation of a moment or two of his life—those moments he lived through on Christmas Eve, 1979, in his room at 6 Varick Street.
136
|
|
|
| |
| Finished Auster |
| 10.11.04 (6:24 am) [edit] |
Finished reading Auster last night.I read "NY Trilogy"
and "Invention of Solitude".I enjoyed both books a lot,
especially "Invention of Solitude". IMO,this last one is the best
I have read of him, next to "In the Country of the Last Things".
I would define "Invention of Solitude" as philosophical prose.
"NY Trilogy" was quite a good read,too. The last part-The Locked Room,
made the whole thing come together and united the other two.It was an interesting
story about the reality and imagination, the words and the world,the written and
the real.Having read "Invention of Solitude" which is kind of autobiographical
and contemplative book,I think I could understand better some of the themes
of "NY Trilogy".
I shall post in a separate entry an excerpt I really liked.
|
|
|
| |
| Books I read in 2004 |
| 10.09.04 (2:32 am) [edit] |
Here is a list of the books I read from the beginning of the year.
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (very good)
Ocean Sea by A.Baricco
Silk by Alessandro Baricco(very good)
A Tuscan Childhood by Kinta Beevor
Under The Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes(very good)
Hiroshimaā€¯ by John Herse
Il Matrimonio di Maria by Rosana di Campo
Io, sirena fuori aqua by Mirella Santamato(good)
Italian Neighbours by Tim Parks(very good)
Kosmetika na vraga by Amelie Nothomb
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Holden
My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk(very good)
Night Train by Martin Amis(very good)
Oracle Night by Paul Auster
Pilgrim by Timothy Findli
Raising Boys by Steve Biddulph
Stones From the River by Ursula Hegi(good)
Tearing the silence: Being a German in America by Ursula Hegi(very good)
The Bonesetter`s Daughter by Amy Tan(good)
"The Stonecarvers" by Jane Urquhart
"Coastliners" by Joanne Harris
"The Reader" by Bernhard Schlink(very good)
"The Body" by Hanif Kureishi
"On Your Knees" by Ann-Marie MacDonald(good)
"I Don`t Know How She Does It" by A.Pearson(good)
Landscape without gravity: A Memoir of Grief" by Barbara Ascher(good)
The Debut by Anita Brookner(good)
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly : A Memoir of Life in Deathā€¯ by Jean-Dominique Bauby)good)
The Girl Who Played Go by Shan Sa(very good)
The Handmaid`s Tale' by Margaret Atwood
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
This Is How I Speak by Sandy Sonnenfeld(good)
The Secret Life of Beesā€¯ by Sue Monk Kidd(very good)
The Virgin Blue by Tracey Chevalier
Thousand Orange Trees by Kathryn Harrison(good)
What Girls Learnļæ½ by Karin Cook(very good)
The Taxi Driver`s Daughter by Julia Darling(good)
Where The Heart Is by Billie Lets
"Norwegian Wood" by Haruki Murakami(good)
"Vernon God Little" by DC Pierre
Knowledge of The Angels by Jill Paton Welsch(good)
"Confessions of a Reformed Dieter" by A.J. Rochester(good)
Amrita by Banana Yoshimoto
------------------------- -----------
Update 12/08
Added to the list:
Arcobaleno by Banana Yoshimoto
NY Trilogy by Paul Auster (good)
Invention of Solitude by Paul Auster (very good)
The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan
Clara Callan by Robert Wright(good)
The Go Between by L.P.Hartley (very good)
The Lady and the Unicorn by Tracy Chevalier (pretty good)
The Last Time They Met by Anita Shreve
Floating In My Mother`s Palm by Ursula Hegi
The Mango Season by Amulya Malladi (good)
The White Castle by Orhan Pamuk (good)
A Map of the World by Jane Hamilton
Lucky by Alice Sebold
"Snow" by Orhan Pamuk (excellent)
57 books so far
I have marked "good" and "very good" the books which I liked above others.
|
|
|
| |
| Auster`s World |
| 10.03.04 (5:22 pm) [edit] |
Today I happened to have a Paul Auster`s night.First,I began with "NY Trilogy"
and read the first part ("A City of Glass"). Then I was quite into the mood and continued
with "Invention of Solitude".
"City of Glass" is an intriguing story.A writer(Daniel Quin)has been hired-
mistakenly,as it seems,to do a mysterious detective job: to protect his client
from his own father who many years ago conducted a monstrous experiment
over the little child.Gradually,Daniel Quinn becomes entrapped into the mystery
and becomes so much absorbed into it that he loses notion of the time and even fails
to know that the father has drowned himself.As always,Auster creates a puzzle
on the subject of identity and personality,and plays with submerging of reality
and fantasy.This part has been an intriguing read;however,I felt at the end
I was needing more clues; I expected more development on some aspects,
for example,the Paradise theme of lost language.
The I went to "Invention of Solitude".I think in this book Auster is at his best.
Beautiful,elegant,crisp prose,enriched with deep thoughts.There are many of them
worth contemplating.Maybe I shall post some excerpts later.
|
|
|
| |
|
|
