lriley 2009

January:

1. Lust-Elfriede Jelinek
2. Netherland-Joseph O'Neill
3. Khirbet Khizeh-S. Yizhar
4. The Romantic dogs-Roberto Bolano
5. With the stroke of a pen--A. Louise Staman
6. Infinite Jest--David Foster Wallace
7. The brief wondrous life of Oscar Wao--Junot Diaz
8. Gomorrah--Roberto Saviano
9. The Unfortunates--B. S. Johnson
10. A werewolf problem in Central Russia--Victor Pelevin
11. A grain of wheat--Ngugi wa Thiong'O

Just starting Roberto Bolano's 2666.

February:

12. 2666--Roberto Bolano
13. Crash--J. G. Ballard
14. A leap--Anna Enquist--sorry I went through the database and cannot link this early reviewers copy.
15. Last Rituals--Yrsa Sigurdardottir
16. The stone carvers--Jane Urquhart
17. The lavender way--Papalazarou
18. Redbreast--Jo Nesbo
19. Indignation--Philip Roth
20. Water-blue eyes --Domingo Villar
21. American Rust--Philipp Meyer
22. Fireworks--Angela Carter

Now working on Halldor Laxness's The great weaver from Kashmir.

So far have reviewed Netherland and The Romantic dogs. Hopefully I'll get to Khirbet Khizeh as well.

>2 lriley: do you want to post your reviews here? or an excerpt? or maybe a link?

#3--Avaland--I was thinking of putting asterisks next to the ones I review and if anyone were interested they could just go through my profile page. Technically speaking I'm a bit of a barbarian and/or moron (my daughter's way of putting my lack of computer savvy) when it comes to all things computer and I have a sense of being rushed right now as well which is mainly due to having my hours changed at work which means a changing sleep pattern. I'd prefer keeping things as simple as possible at least for the time being.

Post X-mas pickups.

Last rituals--Yrsa Sigurdardottir
Gomorrah--Roberto Saviano--an LT early reviewers copy so I'll probably get to it pretty soon.
Jar City--Arnaldur Indridason.
The Redbreast--Jo Nesbo

All of them fit into noir, crime fiction or true crime categorization.

Finishing up on A. Louise Staman's With the stroke of a pen--also a true crime story about the murder of Robert DeNoel in December 1945. DeNoel the man behind Les Editions DeNoel had become a major competitor in French publishing to the Gallimards etc. Accused of collaborating with the Nazis his death came one week before he and his publishing house were to go on trial. There were many people that did not want DeNoel to stand accused in public including Gaston Gallimard and DeNoel's politically connected mistress Jeanne Loviton and her friends. After DeNoel's assassination Loviton was able to squash the investigation into his murder and to steal the company away from DeNoel's wife Cecile which she later sold off to Gallimard.

Also began The brief wondrous life of Oscar Wao today. and though not very far into it--it's been excellent so far.

re: Oscar Wao. Are you keeping a Spanish-English dictionary nearby? Dukedom used Google translator:-)

re: Jar City. I remember thinking the prose of the novel very clipped. At first, I thought it might be the translation and perhaps it was, but it also is in keeping with the detective, Erlander, imo. I'll be interested to hear what you think.

On Oscar Wao--I'm not that far in. So far I wouldn't say I needed one. Anyway the kids comandeered both my Spanish/English dictionaries many moons ago for their schoolwork. I brought it to work today and read from it during breaks.

I've read a bit on the Trujillo dictatorship before. I know of two excellent novels about it--Mario Vargas Llosa's Feast of the Goat details his assassination, the group that brought it to be and the history leading up to--as well Manuel Vazquez Montalban's Galindez is based on the real life death of a Spanish Civil War refugee who ran afoul of Trujillo--who had fled the Dominican Republic and was later kidnapped in NYC (with the aid of some rogue police and FBI--if I remember correctly), drugged, flown back to the D. R. to be very brutally tortured and murdered.

On Indridason I have a clearer idea where you were coming from before Avaland. I read Silence of the Grave recently and it is mainly just about the process of an investigation. The language is a bit clipped but within that kind of genre it's a good device to control pace. It was very good. There is an Irish writer who I think is fantastic at that--Eoin McNamee. Some very dark stuff there on the Irish troubles--particularly Resurrection Man and The Ultras. Not sure when I'm getting to Jar City though. Right now there's Bolano's 2666 (and I am a huge fan), B. S. Johnson's The Unfortunates, Jane Urquhart's The stone carvers, Halldor Laxness's The great weaver of Kashmir and papalaz's book. With the exception of the Johnson--they are all big books. As well as the Nesbo above--I like the idea of thrillers written around actual (even if obscure) historical events. There is also the Early Reviewers Saviano. I feel somewhat obligated to get to that soon. Things will sort out eventually. I have to say work keeps getting in the way. Another 6 or 7 years until freedom.

i loved Oscar Wao, sans Spanish or a Spanish dictionary. Defn. one of the best books i read last year. Also liked both Jar City & Silence of the Grave a good deal - though it was a good deal creepier. Reading Jar City lead me to ask a few Nordic friends about the nature of the Scandinavian languages - in translation everything seems so laconic and almost deadpan.

#8--I put off reading Wao after Polutropos offered to take my copy if I sent it on to him to a Junot Diaz booksigning event. That was a month or two ago. It's been on the radar for a while. I feel fairly excited about a number of the unread right now. Jar City might not happen until the Nesbo and Sigurdardottir books are read. The Nesbo is a crime novel set in the present (I believe) concerning a Neo-Nazi group but informed by events from the past going back to WWII eastern front and Norway's own collaborationists. Sigurdardottir's novel revolves around ancient Scandinavian witchcraft rituals and is set on an isolated island somewhere in Iceland.

I also loved Oscar Wao - it was one of the books the book group I'm in did in 2008; I might well have read it anyway, given the Tolkien-meets-Trujillo advance publicity. I had only three days between obtaining the book and the book group meeting, so I started out without recourse to my trusty Larousse School Spanish Dictionary to help with translation.

About half-way through, I decided to have a go at translating the Spanish, but I soon found that the Larousse dictionary was far too prim and proper to contain many of the words Junot Diaz uses. It didn't bother me, though - it's still a fine book.

#10--Well we're moving along Tim. It's a funny book. I really like Diaz's tone. For me that's as important as plot. I have a huge spanish-english dictionary. I once messed around with translating a Roberto Arlt novel and it (the dictionary) was just about if not the biggest one available. But my son has it ferreted away somewhere now--using it for his spanish classes. At least for the moment I'm winging it. If it gets too tricky though--I'll have to re-confiscate it.

#11-I have never formally studied Spanish, but I have tried reading some of Jorge Luis Borges' Selected Poems in Spanish with the aid of my small dictionary, and that was far easier than trying to read the Spanish in Oscar Wao - Borges' Spanish is far more Latinate, formal, and regular, and the tone is much more "European", as one might expect from Borges' interests and affiliations. Until I started reading Oscar Wao, I was living under the happy delusion that I could follow written Spanish pretty well!

I did enjoy Oscar Wao; got about 3/4 through writing a review then got stuck, plus distracted by other stuff. Will try to finish and post it soon.

#12--That Borges is a dual language book. My tendency is to compare both languages as I move along through a poem. It's a sloppy method though and I have to admit my overall comprehension of Spanish is a bit shaky. Arlt's work by the way depended a lot on slang (period of the late 20's early 30's)--there's an Argentine sub-language called lunfardo that came out of the more poverty sticken and criminally inclined areas of BA that Arlt was prone to use. You can google some of the terms.

#14: Dual-language indeed; but for quite a few poems, I tried to make my way through the Spanish before I looked at the English translation. Slow, but interesting!

#15--I have a dual language of an Andrei Voznesensky An arrow in the wall--using the Russian (cyrillic?) alphabet--that's the toughest one.

as an undergrad @ W&Mary i was taking 2nd yr Latin. I'd had 4 yrs of HS French and though i couldn't parlez francais..i could read quite fluently back then. Our Latin text was a French latin text..w/ the French translation on the facing side. So i spent a semester not doing any homework and getting "A"s on all my in class translations..Then the final..ooops no French..got a C---- and dropped from an A to a B- in one brutal 3hr session. For my sins i can't read French or Latin any more.

#16: I checked my library, and I see have seven books in Russian or dual language English-Russian:

http://www.librarything.com/catalog.php?view=timjones&deepsearch=Russian+lan...

including a dual-language Selected Poems by Anna Akhmatova.

I studied Russian at University, and there was a time when my written Russian was reasonably fluent (although my spoken Russian was never all that good), but I've since lost a lot of it through disuse. Once you get familiar to the alphabet, though, Russian is a lovely language, especially for reading poetry out loud - and if I do that where no-one else can hear me, no-one can tell how bad my accent is!

(This is a lesson I learned the hard way. In an unwise attack of bravado, I once started declaiming poetry in Russian in front of a woman I was then rather keen on. Her boyfriend of the time was there also. Unbeknown to me, he was a professional linguist, and when I'd finished, he said quietly "I've never heard Russian spoken in a New Zealand accent before". That shut me up very effectively.)

That's a pretty funny story Tim. I've had a number of foot in mouth moments myself. As time moves away from them they tend to become more hilarious and I don't know what I'd do without some of them. Anyway you got me looking through my own library. I have a couple Akhmatova's but I haven't spotted them yet--they are around here somewhere. I did pull out Osip Mandelstam's Stone (a Harvill book) and that is dual language. Those two--along with a lot of other great writers lived through a very dark time.

I have moved on finally from David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest. Reviewed it here on LT:

http://www.librarything.com/profile_reviews.php?view=lriley

Currently still working on Diaz's The brief wondrous life of Oscar Wao (about half way through--and I think I'm about the last one in this group to get to it) which is excellent. Also working on Roberto Saviano's Gomorrah and Papalaz's The lavender way which is the story (in diary form) of a British ex-pat living in Crete and setting up house with his girlfriend.

Thanks for your review of Infinite Jest. I'm following your reading with interest, and looking forward to seeing what you have to say about Roberto Bolano. Both these books are on my TBR.

Thanks tcM--I'm debating whether to start Bolano's 2666 today. It's between that and Halldor Laxness's The great weaver of Kashmir or Jo Nesbo's Redbreat or Yrsa Sigurdardottir's Last Rituals.

Started on B. S. Johnson's The Unfortunates yesterday. A very interesting format.
A book in a box with 27 separated loose leaf chapters. There is a first and a last chapter and it's up to the reader to decide the order in which he or she reads the other 25. It's a novel in a sense and a meditation on mortality in another. A writer is sent to Nottingham England to cover a soccer match for his newspaper. He is somewhat familiar with the city because of a very close friend who had recently died (cancer) lived there. It's mainly eye and mind stuff. What the eyes take in--the impressions they register--a lot of remembrance as well. So far it's a bit somber.

Two reviews today--Oscar Wao and Gomorrah.

http://www.librarything.com/profile_reviews.php?view=lriley

Iriley - I enjoyed both reviews. Oscar Wao is on my to-read bookshelf. I plan on getting to it at some point this year.

#24--dchaikin--it is excellent. It would seem that most of the people in this group have read it and they all seem to agree with that.

Anyway finally started Bolano's 2666.

Iriley, I'm about halfway through 2666 and really enjoying it.

Only started today Rebecca--and about 30 pages in. Still working on Johnson's book as well--along with Papalaz's diary and spent quite some time watching the inauguration (an Obama supporter) + did two book reviews and then had to watch the Rangers game--so I've been busy. I expect it is going to be great but so far we're just working with the german lit academics and translators. It reads really well. Bolano had excellent control of language and pace.

kidzdoc got me looking around for Ngugi wa Thiong'o's A grain of wheat which I tracked down finally and started today. My copy is a British (Heinemann) trade edition. When I turned the cover I ran into this inscription:

To She(i)lah
Peace!
MWThiong'o (signature)
4/10/98

Anyway finishing up on Pelevin's A werewolf problem in Central Russia today. Continuing on with Bolano's 2666 which is fantastic.

Cool! I hope you enjoy A Grain of Wheat, and 2666.

#28: Keen to hear what you thought of the Pelevin.

>28 lriley: What luck, Larry! I just finished A Grain of Wheat on kidzdoc's recommendation, as well. It was a really great read. Hope you enjoy it, too!

#28 - Same here; Pelevin, in whole, was my best new find of 2008. And i esp. liked A Werewolf Problem..

#30--Tim--I've read Pelevin before--Omon Ra which I didn't care for and The Yellow arrow which I thought was pretty good. The title story of A werewolf problem in Central Russia is the best of the bunch. After that it's a bit mixed. I would say Vera Pavlona's ninth dream and the Prince of Gosplan that ends the collection were the other highlights--between those 3 stories that is over half the book though. I'd rate it I think about 3 and a half and may do a review some time today. One book it brings to mind a bit--actually the Yellow arrow as well--is Yuri Buida's The Zero train which might be of some interest for people looking at fairly recent Russian literature.

#31--I had read Ngugi's Petals of blood a few years back. I struggled with it a bit. It's a longer novel. So far I like this one better. It fits more into a historical perspective and seems at least so far (I'm only about 70 pages in) that it's clearer at least to me where he wants to go with this one though it may not be as creative in terms of the former. There's a novel I read last year God's bits of wood by Sembene Ousmane it reminds me a bit of--just need to replace the settings a little from Eastern Africa-Kenya and the struggle vs. British colonization to Western Africa--Senegal and the struggle vs. French colonization. I liked it as well but guessing at this point I think Ngugi's will be a little bit better.

That is so exciting to find an autograph in a book - an added pleasure especially if the author really interests you. !

Thanks for the interesting discussions and intriguing books read. I have my TBR list expanding...... perhaps starting with the Pelevin.

#34--pretty sure it came out of the Ithaca NY public library sale (twice yearly--a lot of which are not ex-lib)--a lot of stuff coming out of the Cornell and Ithaca college campuses. Extremely well organized as well. A great place to find books you won't find anywhere else. One of the secrets to my own library's diversity is proximity to those library sales.

#33: I agree - I thought the opening & closing stories were the best in A Werewolf Problem in Central Russia. Have you read anything by the Strugatskii brothers, Arkady and Boris, e.g. The Snail on the Slope, Roadside Picnic, Tale of the Troika, lots of others? Their work covers a similar range to Pelevin's, though is often classed as science fiction rather than satire. Well worth checking out, and a lot was translated into English in the 1970s.

The Zero Train sounds very interesting too - thanks for the tip and your review.

Never even heard of the Strugatskii brothers. Sound almost like futurists. Funny how different Russian writers went about critiquing the Soviet system. Brings to mind Erofeev's Moscow to the end of the line an alcohol induced subway novel. Anyway not promising anyway but I'll check into the costs and availibility of the three you mention above.

The Strugatskys are worth reading but are difficult to find. I remember reading that a number of their novels were edited quite a bit for translation. The Roadside Picnic is the basis of Tarkovsky's Stalker.

#s 37, 38: They wrote quite a lot of books, which seem to be listed on LT under Arkady Strugatsky - I've also read Definitely Maybe, Hard to Be a God and Prisoner of Power, but that was a long time ago, and as I recall these were some of their earlier books. Their work ranges from science fiction with an edge of social criticism to social criticism with an edge of SF and surrealism.

During the Soviet era, writers had quite a lot of latitude for satire if it was dressed up as SF, but I think the brothers Strugatskii/Strugatsky had a genuine interest in SF and SF ideas.

The only Erofeev I've read is his short story "Popugaichik" ("Parakeet"), which I studied in a Russian Literature course - it's hilarious but gruesome.

Moscow to the end of the line comes under a different title in Britain Moscow circles.
It sounds to me that you might like Buida's Zero train.

I have to say that the Strugatskii's have me intrigued and I'm not really much of a Sci-Fi fan. I am however a sucker when it comes to titles. Something like 'Roadside picnic' brings images to mind. 'Definitely maybe' falls into the category of contradictory truisms--part of the daily struggle. 'Hard to be a god' a kind of primer on the human ineptitude and the impossibility of managing others. Thank you GWB--wonderful job--now get lost. Not that he's sci fi but it brings to mind Roberto Arlt.

Anyway I've had a bit of luck looking around and finding some of these works at a reasonable price. I expect I'm going to buy something of theirs in the next day of two--just figuring out what.

The beginning of February finds me still on Roberto Bolano's 2666. Having finished Ngugi's A grain of wheat today I'm going on to J. G. Ballard's Crash. Among those hopefully I will get to this month Jo Nesbo's Redbreast, Jane Urquhart's The stone carvers, Assia Djebar's Fantasia and Halldor Laxness's The great weaver from Kashmir.

I posted a review of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao today, and was amused to see yours was the one posted just before (but some days ago).

Yours is better though dukedom--though reading yours makes me wonder how different people approach Diaz's almost subversive linguistic approach. The Sci-Fi thing as well. He's like a boxer coming at you at different angles. Personally I just took it straight forward. I can read Spanish a bit and clues can sometimes as well be found in succeeding paragraphs. The Sci-Fi referencing I left all to the imagination.

Larry, have you posted a review of Khirbet Khizeh? I'm in no rush, but it's an Archipelago book, if I remember correctly, and I would strongly consider buying it if you liked it.

I was thinking I had but apparently not. The copy I have by the way is under the Ibis Editions imprint--it's not an Archipelago. I think I got it online from B&N.

It's a very good book. Well written and not very long. It follows a detachment of Israeli soldiers expelling--sometimes killing--peaceful Palestinian villagers from their homes in 1949. Elias Khoury pretty much covers the same kind of events in Gate of the Sun but with the added perspective of distance from that time. For the most part the Israeli soldiers are normal--young, cynical, manipulated from above--not yet able to not believe altogether what they are being told, or be able to stand against history in the making. They range in intelligence and a couple of them are uneasy or even more--a little disturbed about what they are doing. Yizhar certainly should be commended for this work.

In purely fictional and/or creative terms though it is not however in the same league as Khoury's above mentioned book. Speaking of which have you ever read Sitt Marie Rose by Etel Adnan?

You're right, Larry. Khirbet Khizeh is not an Archipelago book. I had heard about it from the Three Percent web site, as it was longlisted for the Best Translated Book of 2008. Thanks for the review; I think I'll pass on reading it, as my TBR list is growing rapidly.

I haven't read Sitt Marie Rose, but it sounds like one for the wish list. I did read In the Heart of the Heart of Another Country, a book of her poems that was published by City Lights Books recently, which was very good.

kidzdoc--Sitt Marie Rose is about the Lebanese civil war. It is a great book--though it can be painful to read. Adnan is able to balance objectivity and emotion in her descriptions of atrocities and it's a tough thing to do. It reminds in some ways of Curzio Malaparte's descriptions of Nazi atrocities in eastern Europe in WWII in his Kaputt.

I've read one of Adnan's poetry collections as well. It was good but Sitt Marie Rose is competing in a completely different league.

Thanks Larry; Sitt Marie Rose is on my wish list.

Three new reviews--Anna Enquist's A Leap, Roberto Bolano's 2666 and J. G. Ballard's Crash.

http://www.librarything.com/profile_reviews.php?view=lriley

Recieved Early Reviewers book--American Rust by Philipp Meyer. One of the best first novels I've ever read.

>50 lriley: I have an arc of that also (from my old friends at the bookstore), may have to look at it again.

#51--put up a review--kind of a long one on it Avaland.

http://www.librarything.com/profile_reviews.php?view=lriley

Have finally started on Laxness's Great weaver from Kashmir--it was the first major novel by maybe my favorite nobel literature laureate--though might not be quite as good as his later works. Also started Angela Carter's Fireworks. I know you're a big fan of Assia Djebar--I hope to get to her Fantasia in the next couple weeks.

Larry,

that link does not work. It tells us you don't exist.

I know I have received books from you so I am pretty sure you DO exist.

"Bishop Berkely muttered darkly,
If i can't see you, you can't be you."

learned at my momma's knees as a wee toddler.

#53---oops sorry about that. Now it's okay.

>52 lriley: Thanks (admittedly, I only read the last few lines of your review. I avoid spoilers and anything else that might color my reading of the book:-)

Started a new March-April thread Avaland. I hope you don't mind but all these touchstones drive me nuts looking down the whole list and it seems more manageable with another thread. Probably the best place right now to keep up with recent happenings. Anyway I should finally finish the Laxness book today. I've started Assia Djebar's Fantasia which looks really good--a kind of novelistic alternative Algerian look at history from 1830 to the present time (may be a little reminiscent of Eduardo Galeano's approach--I'll get back to you on that) in which the book is written which was in 1985. Also going to start Karen Connelly's The lizard cage as soon as Laxness is done. Hopefully I'll have some reviews but lately there hasn't been a lot of sleep but there has been lots and lots of distractions. Tuesday--Wednesday I'll be off--I'll write something by then anyway.

>57 lriley: yes, saw that thread also. I think I dispensed with the touchstones on the list at the beginning of my thread. Everytime you edit, of course, they change and one forgets to fix them. I have not read that particular Djebar, but I have it. I'll be a good little girl and go to your new thread now:-)

#58--I think what it is--a lot of different books come up however many times you change them back to where you want and many foriegn authors because of accentuations to their names don't come up at all. Running down the list so often and trying to fix things gets to be a bit much. Maybe your solution is best.

I might also mention that my work hours and days off changed again and sleep pattern changed drastically. It's do-able I suppose but I'm here less frequently and sometimes at strange hours. C'est la vie. Got to do what you got to do.