RoseFromThule's reading 2009

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RoseFromThule's reading 2009

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1rft
Edited: Nov 4, 2009, 9:44 am

I won't search my head for any reading prior to September, but here is the list for Sept.-Dec. 09.

1. Out of Africa - Karen Blixen (Translation from Danish)
2. Open Secrets - Alice Munro (Translation from Canadian English)
3. The Bottoms - Joe R. Lansdale (Translation from American English)
4. Le chat qui venait du ciel - Takashi Hiraide (Translation from Japanese)
5. Big Fat Love - Peter Sheridan (Translation from Irish English)
6. Permutation City - Greg Egan (Translation from English)
7. Father Brown Omnibus - Gilbert Keith Chesterton (Translation from English)
8. The Night watch - Sarah Waters (Translation from English) ==> Currently reading

2rft
Edited: Sep 16, 2009, 7:14 am

Out of Africa - Karen Blixen

I've been meaning to read this account of the life in an African farm at the beginning of the XXth century for a while. It is a kind of counterpoint to Amkoullel, the memoirs of Amadou Hampâté Bâ, the well-known peul writer (I don't know whether its work has been translated into English, but if it is, it's worth looking for).

Anyway, I really enjoyed the poetic, fresh, vivid and friendly tone of this memoir : it has all the elegance and the vivacity of letters from the time where snail mail was the only way to communicate. We could easily imagine them written to relatives in Denmark, cherished people to be entertained with stories about other cherished people. The only part that left me quite puzzled is the 4th one, with its bite-sized tales. I found that, while enjoyable, they disturbed the rythm of the rest of the narration.

It won't be my 2009 book (mainly because it's a bit slow-going), but definitely a good read, and a book I'll probably reread in the future.

Edit - typos

3tonikat
Sep 17, 2009, 7:57 am

Its nice to see the net has reached Thule, which I take to be somewhere just beyond the known world (unless there really is somewhere called that?)

I haven't read all of Out of Africa, I have read some parts -- I was struck by how intimately she related the lives of their workers, and yet how distant she was from them at the same time.

I saw the movie of Babette's Feast once and recommend it highly, not read that either though.

Welcome Rose, I have been careful of my typos (I hope).

4rft
Edited: Sep 21, 2009, 5:09 am

Thank you !

Yes, it's sometimes puzzling : she seems to have both a kind of tenderness for her workers, and a "matter-of-fact-ness" (is there such a word ?). She also has the same attitude toward animals : she obviously loves and respects them (both pets and wild animals), but has no second thoughts when it comes to shoot a lion or even her dogs.
It seems very strange in our cozy, sheltered world, where even the thought of eating a "dedicated" animal can be so disturbing (to me, at least).

(And the Thule in my nickname is the "beyond the known world" place)

Edit - because I didn't thank, how rude.

5rft
Sep 21, 2009, 5:26 am

Open Secrets - Alice Munro

I've heard so much good things about Alice Munro that I decided to try her short stories. The genre is not my favourite, but, here, all stories revolve around a little Canadian town and its inhabitants, giving the book a coherence that makes it less disturbing for the novel-reader.
As a conclusion, I really loved the writing, and the way the characters are depicted. It's both straightforward, devoid of cliche, and with depth. A few stories, I thought, lacked the "story" part of the fiction, or the story itself was left without a conclusion, which is very fustrating (but then, I'm the kind of reader that really don't like loose ends). The character portrayal is good, but without a line of events, it always feels empty and pointless to me.
Anyway, some other stories balanced both sides very well : well-drawn characters AND a coherent story. These ones will stay with me a long time, I think, both because of the pertinence of the portrayals, and the quiet quirkiness of the context.
I'm now really curious to know whether Munro has written any novel. I could'nt find any at my library, but if I do, I'll undoubtly try it.

6dchaikin
Sep 22, 2009, 11:09 am

Rose, just posting to say I've enjoyed your two reviews and look forward to following along.

7rft
Sep 29, 2009, 8:43 am

Oh, thank you, I'm blushing now :)

8rft
Sep 29, 2009, 9:07 am

The Bottoms - Joe R. Lansdale (Translation)

I guess Joe Lansdale is better knows for his noir series, but this novel is a standalone.
It takes place in the East Texas, during the Depression (1930s, if I remember correctly). The narrator, Harry, is a rather quiet 13-year-old boy, whose father is the town constable. One day, Harry and his sister get lost in the swamps that surrounds the town, and find the body of a African American woman, who has been obviously not only been killed, but abused as well. Nobody really cares for this murder, except Harry's father, a straight and kind man. Quickly, he discovers similar cases, and the general indifference gives way to an accute racial tension.

I really likes Lansdale's style, and the setting : from the first paragraphes on, I was hooked and teleported into 30s Texas's swamps (although, if I understand correctly, it wasn't a very comfortable place to visit then, with the dust storms, the floodings, and all). I will certainly look for more Lansdale's novel just because of that. Moreover, I liked the young and naive narrator and his family very much : they reminded me of the Finch family in To Kill A Mockingbird.

However, the main problem here is the lack of subtlety : Bad people are really, really bad. Good people are angel-like. While I fully agree that segregation is to be condemned, I really didn't like the way the author kept hammering this opinion into my head. The plot is see-through, and the story didn't run smoothly but seemed to me a little contrived. For instance : the narrator keeps overhearing conversation between adults that very conveniently described what happens behind his back. I found this trick very awkward.

I read somewhere that Lansdale main genre is contemporary noir, not historical thriller. Maybe it's the reason why this novel didn't fully clicked for me. I hope so, because I really like his writing and could have read the book in one setting.

9rft
Edited: Oct 5, 2009, 9:12 am

Le chat qui venait du ciel (The cat who came from Heaven) - Takashi Hiraide (translation from Japanese)

This very short Japanese novel/memoir has not been translated into English, as far as I know. So I guess the review is pointless, but still !

This is the story of the narrator, a poet who recently left his paid and mindless corporate job to write as much and as freely as he can, and his wife (a poetress as well, I guess, or something similar). They rent a house in the suburbs of Tokyo, and become soon acquainted with Chibi, a small and delicate cat that haunt the garden. Chibi becomes then the embodiment of their freedom, their hapiness and the beauty that surrounds them (the garden and the house is a part of a bigger estate that is still maintened with a traditionnal way).

Usually, I prefer my novels to be more down-to-earth, but I really liked this little, delicate bubble. It sounded really "Japanese" to me (whatever that means, I've never been to Japan and I'm hardly an expert in Japanese litterature), beautiful, light, sweet, poetic ... I only got lost when the narrator/author (as this is a kind of memoir) described geographically the house, the garden, the district ... I just couldn't picture them into my head, I even tried to draw a plan but without success ! So I just went on.
I guess that it the book had been longer, I would have got bored at the end (as happened with I am a cat). But it was only 130 pages and I was delighted !

10rft
Oct 19, 2009, 9:07 am

Big Fat Love - Peter Sheridan (Translation from Irish English)

This is the story of Philo from Dublin. Philo hasn't an easy life : her father hate her, her mother is so obese she can't leave her room (and Philo is following her on this path), her marriage is a wreck, her husband is an alcoholic verbal abuser and she has much more children than she can feed.
So, fed up with everything, the lively, babbling and unstoppable Philo decides to seek refuge in the neighborhood covent, giving the poor nuns a run for their money.

I really liked the buoyancy of this novel, as well as the deep issues underneath. Usually, characters like Philo get on my nerves, but there I found her very sympathetic, as well as almost all the other characters. The whole story feel like a full congress of old gossiping women, overwhelming, full of strength, wry humour, humanity (good or bad), and chat. Plus I got a picture of Dublin that made me eager to visit it someday (although this picture was quite grim from time to time)

Unfortunately, the said story is also quite far-fetched, and trying to find a balance between raw realism (and beware, some bits can be offending) and "warm fuzzies", the result being quite strange, given the strong issues. Now, I don't like raw realism, but I respect it. On the contrary, I really can't stand warm fuzzies. At the end, I lost quite a bit of interest because I felt like the events and the story just happened "like that" and never went anywhere (does this sentence make sense ?)

But if you like Dublin and stories about "real people", and if you're not offended by a little bit of rated content, if you like when the characters are deeply flawed but still good people, then maybe you'll like it.
I did, and even though it won't be one of the 2009 revelations, I'll sure remember a lot of this novel.

11avaland
Oct 19, 2009, 8:53 pm

Hope you like Permutation City, Rose. It's been ages since I read that - I'm not sure I can even remember what it is about (is that the one with the dome over the city?) However, I know dukedom_enough is a BIG Greg Egan fan.

12rft
Oct 20, 2009, 3:45 am

Well, I liked Distress very much, way back when I was a hard-boiled SF buff. I'm not anymore, but maybe this will rekindle my interest.
There is no dome yet in the story, but I'm only in the first pages !

13rft
Oct 29, 2009, 12:43 pm

Permutation City - Greg Egan

In 2040, digitalized copies of (usually wealthy, dead) people are rather common, and sometimes they even take up the responsabilities of their living former selves. But the virtual life is slow, expensive (processor time is coveted worldwide) and vulnerable.
Paul Durham is not a rich deceased, but he dreams to uncover all the mysteries of the digitalized copies : what it feels to be one, how matter and time is perceived, etc. By copying himself, he happens to make a huge discovery about the nature of simulated universes that may change dramatically the future of all copies - or maybe he's just completely crazy ?

----------------------------------

Oh my, this is a complicated novel. Let me put the background right first : I'm a former SF buff (and I mean SF, as in science-fiction) and a (mostly computer) scientist by trade. So this kind of story, full of virtual reality, simulation and computer science is right up my alley.
However, I'm a little ashamed to says that I didn't understand it all. Obviously, the focus of the story is not the plot, nor the characters (which are definitely the weak point - but on the other hand, the author obviously don't have any interest in them either, and never tries to shovel them down our throat. A story must have characters, so there are characters, full stop. If you want 3D characters and rich, dense, detailed, believable sociological and emotional description, it's just not the book for you), its the ideas. The theories. And Egan sure did a very good job in that respect, even though I never even grasped 2/3rd of them, no matter how hard I tried (I hate when I don't fully understand something - which probably explains why I'm a scientist :) ).
So I really liked it, in a way, it was stimulating in a completely "out there" way - but it's quite frustrating because I feel that I really enjoyed a small part of the book, and left behind the most intellect-challenging one.

However, I gradually stopped reading SF some years ago , and, in spite of its flaws and its difficulties, this is the first book to rekindle my interest in the genre.

Warning : some (limited) explicit content. Quite irrelevant, by the way - I couldn't help but think that Egan's editor told him to spice up this huge abstract novel to appeal to the average male SF reader. A pity, if you ask me (but then, editors usually don't :) ).

14rft
Edited: Nov 4, 2009, 9:59 am

The Innocence of Father Brown - G. K. Chesterton
The Wisdom of Father Brown - id.

Both of these books were parts of a "Father Brown" Omnibus I picked at the library. And both can't be satisfyingly summed up because they are collections of short stories. Let just say that they all deal with mysteries that are solved by the sweet, unassuming catholic priest Father Brown.

I quite liked the first stories, even though I had the nagging impression that I've already read some of them. England, and especially England in the 1900s is one of my favourite settings, so I enjoyed this a lot. However, after a while, the stories became repetitive. Maybe I missed the point, but I was looking for something "Hercule Poirot"-ish and it was not up to par. The mysteries solutions were often quite far-fetched, and the sweet Father Brown can be irritating after a dozen of stories. However, I looked for a biography of Chesterton on Wikipedia, and it seems that he's considered as a genius. That is what makes me say that I missed the point of the stories : I read them as whodunnit, while they have probably a deeper meaning. But then, I'm a low-brow reader :)

So, in a nutshell, I read the first "book" and part of the second one in the omnibus, but decided to stop there before being sick of it. This way, I still keep a good memory of its XIXth atmosphere, and may pick it up again sometimes when I need some easy read - or I may buy the books separately in used book stores (which will be a more adequate way of reading them, imo).

15melissa45
Jan 11, 2010, 8:53 am

nice thread, just wanted to leave short mesage