Smiler's Last Minute Dash for 2010

The year's almost over and I'd been putting off joining in because started the year doing lots of things other than reading. But then I've missed this group so instead of waiting for 2011 to start anew, I thought I'd finish up the year with no set goal and read whatever strikes my fancy in my huge tbr collection accumulated these past few years.

My rating system is as follows:

★ - hated it (and/or didn't finish it)
★★ - it was just ok
★★★ - enjoyed it (good)
★★★★ - loved it! (very good)
★★★★★ - all-time favourite (amazing)

Here's what I’ve read so far (more or less by author order since I can't remember the actual sequence of the first 30 books or so):

1. L'immeuble Yacoubian (The Yacoubian Building) by Alaa El Aswany ★★★★½

2. Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson ★★★★

3. Case Histories by Kate Atkinson ★★★★

4. Arthur and George by Julian Barnes ★★★½

5. Kandinsky by Ulrike Becks-Malorny ★★★½ (review)

6. The Lucifer Principle by Howard Bloom ★★ (review)

7. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury ★★½ (review)

8. Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote ★★★ (review)

9. The Lady in the Lake by Raymond Chandler ★★★

10. Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier ★★★ (review)

11. The Case Against Owen Williams by Allan Donaldson ★★★½ (review)

12. The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde ★

13. The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett ★★½ (review)

14. The Old Man and The Sea by Ernest Hemingway ★★★★★

15. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver ★★★★½

16. The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova ★★ (review)

17. La reine dans le palais des courants d'air
(The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest—Millenium 3) by Stieg Larsson ★★★

18. Dressed for Death by Donna Leon ★★★

19. Le retour du professeur de danse
(The Return of the Dancing Master) by Henning Mankell ★★★

20. The Road by Cormac McCarthy ★★★★½ (review)

21. Cesar's Way by Cesar Millan ★★★ (review)

22. Be the Pack Leader by Cesar Millan ★★

23. The Shipping News by Annie Proulx ★★★★

24. Hide and Seek by Ian Rankin ★★★

25. Strip Jack by Ian Rankin ★★★

26. The Black Book by Ian Rankin ★★★

27. Exit Music by Ian Rankin ★★★

28. Tooth and Nail by Ian Rankin ★★★

29. Monsieur Ibrahim et les fleurs du Coran
(Mr. Ibrahim and the Flowers of the Koran) by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt ★★★★ (review)

30. A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth ★★★ (review)

31. Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín ★★½ (review)

32. Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut ★★★ (review)

33. Fingersmith by Sarah Waters ★★★½

34. Jim Dine: Flowers and Plants by Marco Livingstone ★★★★★ (review)

35. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf ★★★½ (review)

36. Sacred by Dennis Lehane ★★★ (review)

37. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe ★★★★ (review)

38. Le rocher de Tanios (The Rock of Tanios) by Amin Maalouf ★★★★½ (review)

Currently reading: Friends in High Places by Donna Leon

34. Jim Dine: Flowers and Plants by Marco Livingstone

I discovered this book at the Visual Art Centre, where there is a fabulous selection of art books and where I'm currently taking drawing and watercolour classes. Our drawing teacher showed us several examples from this book to show us various approaches to drawing from nature and I fell in love with it. This book is currently out of print, but after some online research I found a brand new copy to call my own. Here's the review I just posted for it:

A fascinating look at Jim Dine's nature studies from 1976 to 1993. Dine, best known for his bold Pop Art creations, felt a need to return to drawing from observation in the mid-seventies, something that hadn't been of particular interest to him in his days as an art student. There is a wide range of work, from small scale, meticulously observed and rendered subject in pencil drawing to large scale multimedia works combining charcoal, watercolour, pastel, oil and enamel paint. The text, which features a running explanation of the artist's process for each of the plates shown was both informative and brief. As an art student, I find this book to be an invaluable teaching tool and inspiration for my own forays into painting and drawing.

A book I won't likely ever tire of looking at, I rated it:
★★★★★ (all-time favourite)

Reading To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf right now. It’s been ages since I’ve attempted to read anything by her. I read A Room of One’s Own back in College in a Women’s Studies class, but I couldn’t relate to any part of it at that time. I was quite heartened a couple of days ago when, after getting through the first few pages of Lighthouse, I began to pick up on her rhythm and voice once I caught on the her stream of consciousness, and greatly enjoyed the first part, which describes Mr and Mrs Ramsay and their interactions with their guests and children, the narration fluidly moving from one character’s thoughts to another. Then everything fell apart and I got absolutely lost when the narrative changed completely and was suddenly skipping quickly ahead through time. I couldn’t make heads nor tails of it. It would have been helpful if I’d paid more attention to the title of part 2: Time Passes, but the prose, always beautiful, became much more poetic and since I’ve never much understood about poetry, try as I might, it felt like I was swimming far out to sea in unfamiliar currents. Since it’s a short book and the third part (The Lighthouse) is closer in tone to part 1 (The Window), I’ll persevere and finish it. It’ll be worth my while even if I won’t have understood all of it. I don’t keep many books once I’ve read them for lack of space, but I intend to keep this one to read later on, when, having already gone through it once, I’ll probably understand it on a whole other level next time.

I’ll be receiving 4890::Mrs Dalloway from BookMooch soon and feeling a bit apprehensive because I remember giving it a shot a few years ago and feeling very discouraged and utterly lost. Somehow, I intuit that if I can just get past whatever barrier prevents me from feeling at ease with Virginia, a whole new level of appreciation for great literature will open up to me.

Finally finished To the Lighthouse which took longer than I would have imagined, and I think I'll just keep my previous entry as my review of it because my feelings haven't changed about it. This year I've been more or less alternating between literature and crime novels which in a way, helps me savour the more dense works longer since reading crime stories doesn't require any effort and allows me to keep mulling over the headier fare, but it always feels a little bit strange to go from rich prose to fast-food dialogue... in this case, my first Denis Lehane with Sacred. A bit like following up an evening at a philharmonic concert with a television cop show I guess, and really, who's to say there's anything wrong with that?

36. Sacred by Dennis Lehane ★★★

I wanted to pick up a quick read that wouldn't require any effort, and this mystery did the trick. As is all too often the case with the crime fiction genre, there was plenty to cringe about when it came to the writing, but the storyline was interesting enough to keep me turning quickly through the pages. A dying old tycoon who has recently lost his wife hires detectives Kenzie and Gennaro to find his missing grieving daughter. Very soon it becomes apparent to them that nothing in this case is as it seems, that "black is white and up is down". My first Dennis Lehane and not my last since I mooched another of his mysteries (A Drink Before the War) and also bought Shutter Island on special. They're ok to unwind with, but I don’t think I'll go out of my way to read the whole series.

37. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe ★★★★

I loved this book, which tells the story of Okonkwo, a successful farmer and respected warrior living in an Nigerian village in the late 19th century. The book describes village life and customs in the period preceding and immediately following British colonialism. I was impressed with Achebe's restrained approach both in terms of lack of sentimentality and ability to tell such a complex story with few words. Okonkwo is by no means a sympathetic character, clinging as he does to rigid notions of what constitutes a 'real' man and beating his family members mercilessly whenever his bad temper gets the better of him, yet it's impossible not to empathize with his plight when, returning from a forced exile, he finds his village and it's population utterly transformed by white men who have come to impose their religious and political ideas. I appreciated this book all the more because I read and much enjoyed The Poinsonwood Bible this year, and this novel gave me a deeper insight and historical appreciation for the locals that Kingsolver describes so vividly in her novel. Would definitely recommend.

38. Le rocher de Tanios (The Rock of Tanios) by Amin Maalouf ★★★★½

As our narrator informs us, the Rock of Tanios, which sits outside his village of Kfaryabda in the Lebanese mountains, was believed for two centuries to bring bad luck, since the local villager after whom it was named was last seen sitting on it before his mysterious disappearance in the year 1840. Tanios, born to Lamia, the beauty of the village, may or may not have been the son of the local Sheikh, and Tanios' life, intimately linked to the the fate of his village, was shaped by a series of momentous events, even as the mountain was being disputed between the Egyptian, Turkish, French and English powers. Maalouf is an outstanding raconteur and the pleasure I had of reading him in the original French language can't be overstated.

I read the excellent Baldassare's Odyssey almost a decade ago while on a trip to France, and based on that book alone decided that Maalouf was one of my favourite writers of all time. My only regret when it comes to Tanios is that I didn't read this book when I first heard about it around 1993, when it won the prestigious French Goncourt prize, but I have every intention of catching up on lost time and reading everything by Maalouf I can get my hands on in near future.

For now, I've decided to continue the reading schedule I've adopted this year, which consists of alternating between great literary works and crime fiction books, which for now seems to provide me with just the right balance of intellectual stimulation and easy reading pleasure, though I must say that in Amin Maalouf's case, both qualities are far from being mutually exclusive.