Category: 2012

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2012 Non Fiction Other Recommended books

1001 Books: You Must Read Before You Die

1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (1001 Must Before You Die)

Last year I bought 1001 Children’s Books: You Must Read Before You Grow Up and spent many happy hours (and far too much money!) investigating books for my children. I therefore jumped at the chance to review the adult version, 1001 Books: You Must Read Before You Die.

Weighing nearly 2kg, this chunky book contains a wealth of information. It is divided into four sections (pre 1800, 1800s, 1900s, and 2000s); with each book summarised in around 300 words. As an example, (and a great excuse to mention my all-time favourite book!) here is where it mentions A Fine Balance:

The text gives a brief summary of the plot (without a hint of spoilers) and then goes on to explain why the chosen book is important. Each review is bursting with positivity.

a beautiful and devastating novel whose genius lies in its refusal to allow the reader to escape into either pathos or cynicism.

It is easy to get swept up in the enthusiasm of each page, buying lots of books on a whim (I know that from my year-long relationship with the children’s version!). I’ll take that as a good sign – anything that encourages reading is fantastic.

The wonderful thing about this book is that it doesn’t just focus on classics from the English speaking world and so, although I was familiar with the majority of the titles mentioned, there were still lots of interesting books for me to investigate.

Don’t these sound interesting?

The Taebek Mountains by Jo Jung-rae
A Korean epic which “skilfully conveys intimate personal dramas” whilst playing them “out in a climax of suspicion and terror”

Lady Number Thirteen by Jose Carlos Somoza
A Cuban novel “full of supernatural portents”. “A novel as exciting as it is intelligent.”

The only problem with this is that many of the books (including the two mentioned above) aren’t actually translated into English yet and this can be frustrating. This isn’t the fault of the person compiling the book, in fact I admire them. It just highlights the number of amazing books that we are missing out on in the UK. I hope that the stigma around translated books reduces with time and more of these outstanding books can make their way onto our shelves.

Overall I can’t fault this book – it is perfect for all bibliophiles. The only problem is the fact it highlights how many amazing books there are and simple calculations show it will be difficult to fit them all in before we die.

 

 

Categories
2012 Booker Prize

The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng

The Garden of Evening Mists Shortlisted for 2012 Booker Prize

Five words from the blurb: Malaya, Japanese, war, gardener, tattoo

The Garden of Evening Mists is set in a remote region of Northern Malaya. It is here that Yun Ling Teoh, the sole survivor of a Japanese concentration camp, discovers a Japanese garden. She meets the skilled craftsman who created it, but because the tranquility of the garden is in stark contrast to the horrific way she was treated by the Japanese during the war her relationship with him is difficult and emotional. As the book progresses the story becomes more complex; involving escalating violence within the country, mysterious tattoos and Yun Ling’s terrible experiences in the concentration camp.

I’m not a fan of gardening so this book didn’t appeal to me initially, but the more I read, the more I fell under its spell. By the end I was transfixed and impressed by the depth and complexity of the narrative. I was also surprised by the way the author made me interested in both the construction of Japanese gardens and horimono tattoos – it takes a skilled author to bring such diverse topics to life.

The descriptive passages in the book were wonderful – they described the Malayan jungle and the Japanese garden beautifully. Unfortunately the dialogue didn’t seem to be of the same high standard – I found it clunky and irritating. The following passage is a good example of the way dialogue ruined a good descriptive passage:

The lights in the garden came on, dizzying the flying insects. A frog croaked. A few other frogs took up the call and then more still until the air and earth vibrated with a thousand gargles.
‘Ah Cheong’s gone home,’ said Frederik. ‘He’ll come tomorrow morning. I brought you some groceries. I imagine you haven’t had time to go to the shops yet.’
‘That’s very thoughtful of you.’
‘There’s something I need to discuss with you. Perhaps tomorrow morning, if you’re up to it?’
‘I’m an early riser’
‘I hadn’t forgotten.’ His eyes hovered over my face. ‘ You’re going to be alright on your own?’
‘I’ll be fine. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
He looked unconvinced, but nodded. Then he turned and walked away, taking the path I had just come along, and disappeared into the shadows beneath the trees.

As I made my way further into the book the dialogue became less of a problem. I can’t decide whether this is because I got used to it and so it began to feel natural, or because the plot became more gripping and so I could overlook any problems I had.

I wasn’t very familiar with the history of Malaya before starting this book, but the historical events were seamlessly blended into the plot and I didn’t find my lack of previous knowledge to be a hindrance. It was wonderful to read such a culturally rich book and I loved learning  little snippets of information about both Malaya and Japan.

The Garden of Evening Mists is a fantastic novel. It is beautifully structured, packed with complex characters, and contains a haunting narrative that introduces the reader to a period of history that is often overlooked. I hope it wins the Booker Prize next week.

(I nearly gave it 4.5 stars and can see that my appreciation of it may grow with time)

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The thoughts of other bloggers:

The over-arching sense of place spans the whole book beautifully – there were times I felt I could close my eyes and see the whole estate laid out before me. Alex in Leeds

The Japanese-style garden of the title, located in a mountainous region of Malaysia, displays characteristics of organization, order, and beauty that the author mirrors in his construction of the text: absences, internal borrowings, sudden revelations through carefully revealed scenes, and many other attributes of artful design. Read, Ramble

 Although this book is reminiscent of Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day I thought Tan brought something extra to the piece. He brought more culture, more plotting. JoV’s Book Pyramid

 

Categories
2012

Arcadia by Lauren Groff

Arcadia

Five words from the blurb: commune, mansion, utopian, idealists, dream

On the surface Arcadia is about life in an American commune during the 1970s, but on completion I realised it is about much more than that. This book questions our priorities – the way we choose to live our lives and how technology can be both a positive and a negative for society.

The book begins with the birth of Bit (a nickname given to him because of his small size) and follows him through his childhood in the commune. His happy life in the crumbling mansion they inhabit is marred only slightly by the behaviour of the adults around him. In the second half of the book we see his adult life, away from his shelter of the isolated community. It is only with the benefit of hindsight that Bit realises the problems of commune life were far greater than he was aware.

The writing was beautiful, with quotable passages scattered throughout:

Childhood is such a delicate tissue; what they had done this morning could snag somewhere in the little ones, make a dull, small pain that will circle back again and again, and hurt them in small ways for the rest of their lives.

Groff’s writing has improved since The Monstors of Templeton, but although the two books are different in terms of style and subject matter, Arcadia retains some of the fairytale-like properties of her debut novel. There is a lightness to her writing that makes the images jump off the page and I love her descriptions of the natural world. She is an author whose words need to be savoured slowly as it requires concentration to fully appreciate this novel.

The only reason I didn’t award more stars is because Bit’s narration was distant and I felt as though he was observing life instead of taking part in it. I’m sure this style was deliberate, but it meant I wasn’t emotionally invested in any of the characters. I also found that most of the peripheral characters weren’t fully developed and many of them were little more than random names to me.

These are minor complaints though. Arcadia is a wonderfully original take on the utopian novel and I loved the way it combined so many different elements of our culture. I can see it becoming a modern classic.

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The thoughts of other bloggers:

Lauren Groff not only manages to cover fifty years in less than three hundred pages, she manages to do it while also playing with genre and exploring the nature of community and freedom. Nomadreader

There were moments of great writing and good storytelling but not enough to sustain my interest in the book… Kim Herrington, Goodreads Reviewer
(Note: blog reviewers were so overwhelmingly positive that I had to dig deep to find a negative opinion of Arcadia)

Reading this book, I felt the tug on my English-major soul to write a paper, to explicate metaphors, to read all the many literary works mentioned that have somehow escaped me so far. This is a book for people who love books. Reading Rock Books

 

Categories
2012 Booker Prize

Swimming Home by Deborah Levy

Swimming Home Shortlisted for 2012 Booker Prize

Five words from the blurb: villa, family, darkness, France, depression

Swimming Home is a simple story with complex undercurrents. It is set in a French villa where two couples are sharing a holiday together. The book opens with them discovering a naked woman in their swimming pool. The woman claims to have rented the villa too and after a discussion about the mix up they agree to let her stay, leading to the classic “stranger in the house” narrative.

My main problem with the book was that I couldn’t engage with any of the characters. They weren’t described in sufficient detail for me to be able to picture them and there seemed to be too many for this short book. It is described as a dark, disturbing tale, but I was so distanced from events that I didn’t care when something distressing occurred and had no empathy for any of the characters, no matter how bad their problems were.

Much of the book deals with depression, but I felt that it kept sidestepping the issues and I never gained any real insight into the situation.

The women feeding their children with long silver teaspoons glanced curiously at the silent brooding woman with bare shoulders. Like the waiter, they seemed offended by her solitude. She had to tell him twice she was not expecting anyone to join her. When he slammed her espresso on the empty table set for two, most of it spilled onto the saucer.

The writing was good, with some wonderfully observed metaphors and many vivid descriptions, but there was no forward momentum and I frequently found myself losing interest. Another frustration was that the entire book was based around a poem, one which the reader never sees.

An introduction by Tom McCarthy states that Deborah Levy has:

…..read her Lacan and Deleuze, her Barthes, Marguerite Dura, Gertrude Stein, and Ballard, not to mention Kafka and Robbe-Grillet – and was putting all these characters to work in new, exhilarating ways.

Unfortunately I haven’t read many books by these authors and so am clearly missing out on all the parallels. As a book on its own Swimming Home is quite dull, but if you take it as a reflection on the literature of the last hundred years, it is probably genius.

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The thoughts of other bloggers:

Dark, dangerous and unknowable, this novel, like the pool at its centre with its covering of fallen leaves has hidden depths and dangers that might just make it the dark horse on this year’s Booker list. Just William’s Luck

…the barely-there plot is rather dull but the story is intriguing and compelling. Reading Matters

Short yet dense, this delicate novel is a tense and edgy read whose poignant ending leaves its readers unnerved. The Unlikely Bookworm

Categories
2012 Booker Prize

Abandoned: Umbrella by Will Self

Umbrella Shortlisted for 2012 Booker Prize

Five words from the blurb: people, victims, patient, truth, dense

Will Self is an author I’ve wanted to try for a long time and so I was quite pleased that the Booker Prize encouraged me to pick up one of his books. Unfortunately Umbrella didn’t work for me and I wonder if I’d have been better off starting with another one of his books?

Umbrella spans an entire century – following a feminist in 1918, her treatment with a psychiatrist in 1971, and the reflections of the psychiatrist in 2010.

The book is written in a stream of consciousness writing style (something I often struggle with) but I found this book particularly difficult to engage with. The thoughts meandered all over the place and I failed to find a hook to keep me interested.

Try as she might to prevent herself, Audrey has asked him whether their relation is physical – although he disdains the idea: Venetia? M’dear, she’s a baby, she’s shwaddled in the eternal childishness of wealth, shponged and pampered by her nursing maids and wet nurshed at houshe parties….That may be so, yet for Audrey the closeness between the society lady and the  socialist is insupportable, especially here, where a portrait photograph of her attired as Diana the Huntress stares down from a nearby whatnot…it’s the umbrellas. Aha, the umbrellash, the fruitish of your labourish…….She counters: I don’t make umbrellas, Gilbert, or brollies, or garden tents, or portable pavilions for the bloomin’ beach – I’m a typewriter, I make words.

The writing was outstanding, with beautiful phrases sprinkled throughout the text, but finding them was hard work. There were also a substantial number of obscure words – something made all the more infuriating by the fact that half of them appear to have been invented by the author. It took extreme concentration to make it through each page and after 2 hours of this torture (75 pages) I decided I couldn’t endure any more and abandoned it.

If you enjoy a stream of consciousness writing style and like to concentrate on symbolism and the beauty of individual phrases then I’m sure you’ll enjoy this, but I prefer books that are more engaging.

Have you read anything written by Will Self?

Are all his books written in a steam-of-consciousness writing style?

Do you think I’d enjoy any of his other books?

Categories
2012

The Lost Memory of Skin by Russell Banks

Lost Memory of Skin

Five words from the blurb: sex offender, trapped, encampment, relationship, past

The Lost Memory of Skin first came to my attention when it was listed as a ‘Book of the Month’ on Amazon. It went on to appear on many ‘Best of 2011’ lists in America and I was drawn to the reviews which described it as bleak, unsettling and powerful. It was released in the UK earlier this year and I bought a copy, hoping I’d love it as much as everyone else. Unfortunately it wasn’t a complete success, but I was impressed by many aspects of this compelling narrative.

The Lost Memory of Skin is controversial, thought provoking and original. It focuses on ‘The Kid’, a twenty-one year old man who has recently been released from prison. As a registered sex offender he must live 2,500 feet away from anywhere children might gather, which, due to the large number of schools and nurseries, means he is restricted to living under a causeway in a makeshift camp with numerous other sex offenders. Here he meets a Professor who is studying the homeless. The two form a strange friendship which develops as they reveal the truth about their pasts to each other. During your treatment you may have slight discomfort, or a heat sensation on the skin. Our Laser has a patented dynamic cooling device that minimizes discomfort by cooling the skin. You may experience redness, bumps, and slight swelling in the area for a few hours post procedure. If these conditions persist, topical creams such as aloe, calamine or hydrocortisone may be applied along with a cool compress. For more information about Laser Hair Removal Session you can click here to investigate.

The beauty of this book is the way it makes the reader feel sorry for sex offenders. It questions the way American society deals with these criminals and points out many failings in the treatment of them. It occasionally felt a little preachy, but I was willing to forgive this as the rants were often thought provoking in nature:

We cast them out, we treat them like pariahs, when in fact we should be studying them close up, sheltering them and protecting them from harm, as if indeed they were fellow human beings who have inexplicably reverted to being chimpanzees or gorillas, and whose genetic identity with us and their shared ancestry with us can teach us what we ourselves are capable of becoming if we don’t reverse or alter the social elements that caused them to abandon a particularly useful set of sexual taboos in the first place.

‘The Kid’ was a fantastic character. He was deeply flawed, but as the book slowly revealed the extent of his crimes I became increasingly attached to him. It was possible to understand the motivations for his actions and feel sympathy for his predicament – a testament to Russell Banks’ skill as an author.

The first half of the book was fantastic (easily a five star read), but unfortunately things went downhill after that. The book started to concentrate on the professor and I found his storyline bizarre. I didn’t have any empathy for him and his story didn’t really fit with the rest of the book. The narrative went off on some weird tangents and I lost interest on several occasions. Luckily the plot eventually reverted to ‘The Kid’ again and the ending was OK.

The sexual subject matter will put off a lot of readers, but anyone with an open mind will find themselves looking at sexual offenders in a new light. Any book that is capable of changing my opinion on a subject deserves high praise and so, despite my reservations about the last half of this book, I can only recommend it.