Recently, I haven’t had much time to write about books, so I thought I would briefly list the books that I read during the month of March:
Here are my observations: Continue reading
Filed under Digressions, Literature
It’s taking me ages to finish Mohamed Berrada’s post modern novel, The Game of Forgetting. Yet this morning I was able to get some reading done during what felt like the neverending metro commute, and I came across these lines in Berrada’s novel:
I think that many people are miserable because they are unable to remember their childhood and incorporate it into their present life. The experiences they lived in childhood are like something that happened to others. This is, perhaps, because they think childhood is less serious than is necessary for life . . .
Filed under Digressions, Literature
I just finished reading Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen about a young man who loses both of his parents in a car accident and joins the circus in the 1930s. Gruen heavily researched the traveling circuses of the time period to create this fast paced, well written and constructed novel. I very much enjoyed it (it was a page turner), but wouldn’t call it a masterpiece. It reminded me a lot of the movies Big Fish and Friend Green Tomatoes and John Irving’s The Cider House Rules. The most powerful aspect of the story was its disturbing portrayal of the helplessness of the aging process. But other than that, I never really understood the whole purpose of telling a story about the circus — other than thinking that it would be a novel (no pun intended) storyline and for some cheap symbolic effect. Continue reading
Filed under Essays, Literature
This weekend I finally finished reading The Girl from the Golden Horn by Kurban Said (or Essad Bey / Lev Nussimbaum as exposed in Tom Reiss’ The Orientalist). In short, if you’re interested in reading something by Kurban Said, read Ali and Nino and don’t waste your time with The Girl.
When I started reading The Girl, I began doubting Tom Reiss’ conclusion that Kurban Said was in fact just Lev Nussimbaum. I don’t mean that I doubted that Nussimbaum had written Ali and Nino, but I considered that the author of Ali and Nino and The Girl were actually two different people. By the end of the book, though, I was convinced Lev Nussimbaum had written both stories, even though the quality of the two differ enormously. Continue reading
Filed under Essays, Literature
I just finished reading Tom Reiss’ celebrated biography of Lev Nussimbaum, The Orientalist. The biography’s subtitle is “Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Mysterious Life”, yet the book doesn’t quite do that, nor does it serve as the definitive argument proving that Nussimbaum was in fact Kurban Said (the author of Ali and Nino). Neverthless, I did enjoy the story and I would recommend it, with the caveats mentioned below. Continue reading
Filed under Essays, Literature
I have a case of too much home entertainment on my hands. One of the problems is that Christmas normally lasts from the day after Thanksgiving until December 25th. After that point, all Christmas music and decorations should be safely put away until the following November. But this is not the case in Spain where the Epiphany is celebrated as a central part of Christmas season.
As a matter of fact, children receive their gifts not from Santa Claus on December 25th, but rather from the three Wise Men (Reyes Magos, ironicially a misnomer since they are not kings nor magicians) on January 6th. This all means that after having said my good byes to Christmas two weeks ago, I returned to Spain to find that everyone was still out shopping and whistling expired caroles. Furthermore, as today is January 6th, everything is closed except for bakeries which sell the traditional and inedible Roscón de Reyes (a dry, uninteresting cake). As a result, I have spent today (and the entire weekend) locked up inside my apartment alternating between various Christmas gifts and my new reading list to entertain myself. Continue reading
Filed under Digressions, Literature, Living la vida española
It’s a new year and I just got back from home. That means many of things, one of which is that I have a new list of books for the new year. Here’s what’s new on my shelf and in deck: Continue reading
Filed under Digressions, Literature
This weekend, to avoid the cold and the shoppers, I assumed the fetal position and read from cover to cover Paul Bowles’ The Sheltering Sky. I had seen the movie a couple of times and had started and abandoned the novel once before, so I decided to give it a second go.
There is a well-known quote from the story that reads,
… we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that’s so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.
This reminded me of something that I had written before in a post entitled, “Real and Personal Property and Possession” on how the only property that we ever really possess is the intangible: Continue reading
Filed under Digressions, Literature
Contrary to what I might have said a few weeks ago, I finished Ali and Nino before the year’s end. Coincendentally, I started 2007 off with Samarkand that deals with 11th Century Persia but also briefly covers pre-World War I Iran, and ended the year with Ali and Nino that commences on the eve of World War I in Baku, Azerbaijan.
I used to have a friend who would also say after reading a book that it was great except for the last page, and actually, I would say the same thing for Ali and Nino. Regardless of the last page, it is a wonderful novel for anyone interested in Middle Eastern or European history. Azerbaijan is especially interesting as it falls on the fault line between Europe, Russia, Turkey, and Iran, and the novel does a great job of putting that threshold into prospective. It is also interesting is to see how much the world has changed since World War I and how much has not changed.
Finally, the author, Liv Nussmbaum (under the pen name Kurban Said), is a novel himself. Tom Reiss has recently published a biography about Nussmbaum, entitled The Orientalist – Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life.
Filed under Digressions, Literature
I was doing pretty well, at least until I discovered Podcasts, and then I pretty much stopped reading. I did begin Kurban Said‘s Ali and Nina which was incredibly promising, but I don’t think that my schedule until after the Holiday Season will give me the time to finish it. So, I believe it is safe now to give my list of the books that I most enjoyed reading in 2007. Continue reading
Filed under Digressions, Literature
Grave Error 