Category: Reading the World
The Lake
Chihiro, a painter of murals, tells the story of The Lake. Her late mother was the owner and ‘mama-san’ of a club and her father is of some prominence in their small rural town. The book opens with her mother’s hospitalisation and death, which leaves Chihiro feeling lost and distanced and eventually she moves to Tokyo, where she meets Nakajima, who lives in the building diagonally across. She finds herself attracted to him.
There’s a tenacity in him that’s beyond all that. The intensity of a person unafraid of death, at the end of his rope.
Maybe that’s how I knew we would get along.
Yes there is an actual lake in this book.
“The water was so still you almost felt like it would absorb any sounds that reached it. The surface might have been a mirror. Then a wind blew up and sent small waves drifting across it. The only sound was the chirping of birds that whirled around us, high and low.”
Nakajima and Chihiro travel several hours to get to it, to a little shack by the lake that Nakajima and his mother used to live in, and which is now the home of Mino and Chii, siblings who make their living as clairvoyants. That is, Mino voices what the bedridden Chii ‘sees’. Mino also makes the most delicious tea, from spring water.
“The tea, made from leaves with a subtly smoky aroma, was so good I could feel my senses sharpening. It had a sweetness to it, and at the end of each sip I’d catch a whiff of fruit.”
And this is that kind of book that is to be read with a pot of steaming tea (lapsang souchong perhaps?) next to you - and I suppose if you have a view of a lake, that would be helpful. Because this is story that gradually awakens.
I made the mistake of glancing at an interview with Banana Yoshimoto about The Lake which revealed more than I cared to know (at the point of my reading progress). The Goodreads description also reveals just a little too much about the story. So hopefully I’ve managed not to, and if you are interested in reading this book, just jump right in and read it, without reading too much about it! Because Yoshimoto (and her translator) has written a book that seems, at first glance, simple, direct. But there is so much more beneath.
“But sometimes we encounter people like Nakajima who compel us to remember it all. He doesn’t have to say or do anything in particular; just looking at him, you find yourself face-to-face with the enormousness of the world as a whole. Because he doesn’t try to live in just a part of it. Because he doesn’t avert his gaze.
He makes me feel like I’ve suddenly awakened, and I want to go on watching him forever. That, I think, is what it is. I’m awed by his terrible depths.”
Title: The Lake
Author: Banana Yoshimoto
Translated by: Michael Emmerich
Originally published in 2005
Please Look After Mom
“Before you lost sight of your wife on the Seoul Station subway platform, she was merely your children’s mother to you. She was like a steadfast tree, until you found yourself in a situation where you might not ever see her again – a tree that wouldn’t go away unless it was chopped down or pulled out. After your children’s mother went missing, you realized that it was your wife who was missing. Your wife, whom you’d forgotten about for fifty years, was present in your heart. Only after she disappeared did she come to you tangibly, as if you could reach out and touch her.”
I’m in a reviewing sort of mood. Perhaps because of the holiday season, my work has slowed and I find myself with time on my hands for a change. That is, when wee reader is napping and the chores are somewhat done (chores are never really ever done, are they?). And I’m reading but I’m sometimes also thinking about the books I’ve just finished. Like this one.
Please Look After Mom is one book that had stuck in my head. Maybe it’s because I’ve read very few books set in Korea, much less by a Korean author. Maybe it’s because of the very disorientating second-person narrative, and the different points of view the author takes on, switching from character to character with each chapter. It really is very jarring, this use of ‘you’. I glanced through a review that mentioned those choose-your-adventure books I loved as a kid. And it is a little like that. You. You. And you. Your mom (mother? – ‘mom seems too American, and rather out of place in this very Korean book). It is very strange and quite hard to get used to.
So Mom (your mom) disappears in Seoul. She and Father are at the subway station, Father steps into the train. The doors close. Mom is still on the platform. Father gets off at the next stop and backtracks but she’s gone.
This much you know from the publicity, the book description, when the story opens with the family is desperate and determined to find Mom. Their idea? Flyers. And that job falls on ‘you’, or Chi-hon, the writer and daughter, for words that are apt, for words that will bring Mom back home.
“Hyong-chol designates you to write up the flyer, since you write for a living. You blush, as if you were caught doing something you shouldn’t. You aren’t sure how helpful your words will be in finding Mom.”
And as Chi-hon goes about her search, she can’t help but think of Mom, remember Mom, wonder what she was doing when Mom disappeared.
The first chapter has a rather instructive, perhaps even chiding tone. One of the sections begins with: “either a mother and daughter know each other very well, or they are strangers”. Another informs that: “Most things in the world are not unexpected if one thinks carefully about them.” And that put me off. I felt like I was in some kind of moral education class. But I wondered if that was a cultural thing. If that was something more Korean, more Asian (ok so I am Asian myself, but a more ‘westernised’ Asian, speaking, reading, writing English far better than my ‘mother tongue’ of Chinese. I have never – and am incapable of – reading literature in Chinese, other than what the texts that I was forced to read in school). So I stuck it out. And things do get a little better.
The next chapter swings us around to Chi-hon’s brother Hyong-chol, who looks for Mom in all his old neighborhoods, after receiving tips about her location. Like his sister, he thinks of Mom, wonders what he had been up to when she went missing.
Then their father. A man who hasn’t seen his wife for who she really is, not for many years, perhaps not ever.
I’ve been wondering if my new-ish status as a mother (nearly nine months now, where did the time go?) – and a stay-at-home one at that – has affected the way I perceive things. And in this book, the way I’ve been reading the children’s perception of their mother. The way she has been taken for granted by her family. So there is all this sadness. Of the consciousness of love only after a loss.
The sentiment is there. The translation is a little wanting and the initial tone off-putting. So I am hesitant to recommend this book.
Library Loot (September 9, 2011)
Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Marg from The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library.
So with RIP-ing in mind, I picked up a couple of suitable books (as well as one on hold – and more to come as they are in transit..!) and of course grabbed myself some more.
Terror
I’ve been wanting to read this since Richard Flanagan’s Wanting (they both feature Sir John Franklin). Definitely an RIP read. Wasn’t expecting it to be that huge though.
The men on board HMS Terror have every expectation of finding the Northwest Passage. When the expedition’s leader, Sir John Franklin, meets a terrible death, Captain Francis Crozier takes command and leads his surviving crewmen on a last, desperate attempt to flee south across the ice. But as another winter approaches, as scurvy and starvation grow more terrible, and as the Terror on the ice stalks them southward, Crozier and his men begin to fear there is no escape. A haunting, gripping story based on actual historical events, The Terror will chill you to your core.
A Red Herring Without Mustard: A Flavia de Luce Novel
Hello Flavia! Can’t wait!
Also an RIP VI read.
Award-winning author Alan Bradley returns with another beguiling novel starring the insidiously clever and unflappable eleven-year-old sleuth Flavia de Luce. The precocious chemist with a passion for poisons uncovers a fresh slew of misdeeds in the hamlet of Bishop’s Lacey—mysteries involving a missing tot, a fortune-teller, and a corpse in Flavia’s own backyard.
Flavia had asked the old Gypsy woman to tell her fortune, but never expected to stumble across the poor soul, bludgeoned in the wee hours in her own caravan. Was this an act of retribution by those convinced that the soothsayer had abducted a local child years ago? Certainly Flavia understands the bliss of settling scores; revenge is a delightful pastime when one has two odious older sisters. But how could this crime be connected to the missing baby? Had it something to do with the weird sect who met at the river to practice their secret rites? While still pondering the possibilities, Flavia stumbles upon another corpse—that of a notorious layabout who had been caught prowling about the de Luce’s drawing room.
Pedaling Gladys, her faithful bicycle, across the countryside in search of clues to both crimes, Flavia uncovers some odd new twists. Most intriguing is her introduction to an elegant artist with a very special object in her possession—a portrait that sheds light on the biggest mystery of all: Who is Flavia?
How to Read the Air
The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears was checked out. So we’ll see how this one goes then.
Dinaw Mengestu’s first novel, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, earned the young writer comparisons to Bellow, Fitzgerald, and Naipaul, and garnered ecstatic critical praise and awards around the world for its haunting depiction of the immigrant experience. Now Mengestu enriches the themes that defined his debut with a heartbreaking literary masterwork about love, family, and the power of imagination, which confirms his reputation as one of the brightest talents of his generation.
One early September afternoon, Yosef and Mariam, young Ethiopian immigrants who have spent all but their first year of marriage apart, set off on a road trip from their new home in Peoria, Illinois, to Nashville, Tennessee, in search of a new identity as an American couple. Soon, their son, Jonas, will be born in Illinois. Thirty years later, Yosef has died, and Jonas needs to make sense of the volatile generational and cultural ties that have forged him. How can he envision his future without knowing what has come before? Leaving behind his marriage and job in New York, Jonas sets out to retrace his mother and father’s trip and weave together a family history that will take him from the war-torn Ethiopia of his parents’ youth to his life in the America of today, a story-real or invented- that holds the possibility of reconciliation and redemption.
The Piano Teacher
Been wondering about this book for a while.
In the sweeping tradition of The English Patient, Janice Y.K. Lee’s debut novel is a tale of love and betrayal set in war-torn Hong Kong. In 1942, Englishman Will Truesdale falls headlong into a passionate relationship with Trudy Liang, a beautiful Eurasian socialite. But their affair is soon threatened by the invasion of the Japanese as World War II overwhelms their part of the world. Ten years later, Claire Pendleton comes to Hong Kong to work as a piano teacher and also begins a fateful affair. As the threads of this spellbinding novel intertwine, impossible choices emerge-between love and safety, courage and survival, the present, and above all, the past.
The Cellist of Sarajevo
Another one that’s been on my list, and spotted it while browsing the shelves (wee reader was dozing in his stroller and I took the advantage to do more browsing didn’t want to wake him).
In a city under siege, four people whose lives have been upended are ultimately reminded of what it is to be human. From his window, a musician sees twenty-two of his friends and neighbors waiting in a breadline. Then, in a flash, they are killed by a mortar attack. In an act of defiance, the man picks up his cello and decides to play at the site of the shelling for twenty-two days, honoring their memory. Elsewhere, a young man leaves home to collect drinking water for his family and, in the face of danger, must weigh the value of generosity against selfish survivalism. A third man, older, sets off in search of bread and distraction and instead runs into a long-ago friend who reminds him of the city he thought he had lost, and the man he once was. As both men are drawn into the orbit of cello music, a fourth character—a young woman, a sniper—holds the fate of the cellist in her hands. As she protects him with her life, her own army prepares to challenge the kind of person she has become.
A novel of great intensity and power, and inspired by a true story, The Cellist of Sarajevo poignantly explores how war can change one’s definition of humanity, the effect of music on our emotional endurance, and how a romance with the rituals of daily life can itself be a form of resistance.
A Conspiracy of Kings (Thief of Eddis)
I haven’t read this. I think?
Sophos, heir to the throne of Sounis, has disappeared without a trace. Eugenides, the new and unlikely king of Attolia, has never stopped wondering what happened to his friend. Nor has the Queen of Eddis, who once offered Sophos her hand. They send spies. They pay informants. They appeal to the gods. But as time goes by, it becomes less and less certain that they will ever see their friend alive again.
Battles are fought, bribes are offered, and conspiracies are set in motion. Across the sea, a ruthless empire watches for even the slightest weakness. And Sophos, anonymous and alone, bides his time. Until, drawing on his memories of Gen, Pol, the magus—and Eddis—Sophos sets out on an adventure that will change all of their lives forever.
For wee reader:
Mister Seahorse
Socksquatch
Orange Pear Apple Bear
Adorable!
Have you read any of these books? What did you think of them?
See more Library Loot here
The Slap
Ah it’s so tempting to throw in some slap-worthy puns when writing about Christos Tsiolkas’ The Slap. Oops yeah, that one slipped right by me!
This winner of the 2009 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize opens with a party at Hector and Aisha’s, which ends rather abruptly when Hector’s cousin Harry slaps a rather bratty four-year-old, the son of Aisha’s friend, Rosie. Rosie and Harry decide to press charges, and all of this kind of spirals out of control for a bit. The reader gets propelled through the book, through the story by different voices, including that of Harry, teenager Connie who works at Aisha’s office, Aisha’s other friend Anouk, Hector’s dad Manolis.
It’s a bit hard to properly describe The Slap, except that perhaps it is a look into the lives of contemporary Australians. And these are flawed, ordinary, everyday people, trying to go about their lives as best as they can. They are also really quite angry people. As a result, there is:
- prejudice and stereotypes
- some violence
- a lot of drinking
- drug use by teenagers
- quite a bit of sex (and some of it is rather ugly)
- and even more swearing
It is quite an unpleasant read, but I managed to make it through the end, despite some rather cringey bits and only ok writing. Not all books have to be pleasant and lovely, sometimes a bit of ugly is required, and The Slap is a lot of ugly. It is quite a bit to take in but it is also quite a book, with its portrayal of modern, suburban families in Australia.
Christos Tsiolkas’ works:
* Loaded (1995)
* Jump Cuts (with Sasha Soldatow, 1996)
* The Jesus Man (1999)
* The Devil’s Playground (2002)
* Dead Europe (2005)
* The Slap (2008)
Graceland
Graceland is one of those books that you know will be a difficult, perhaps even devastating read. But it is a book that you will want to read and will want to finish, because, well, because Chris Abani really is that good.
Teenaged Elvis Oke lives in a Lagos ghetto with his alcoholic father Sunday, stepmother and step-siblings. He picks up some tips dancing for the tourists on the beach, dressed as Elvis Presley of course, but is forced to find a more stable income to support his family. Elvis and his friend Redemption dream of living in America, but their version of America is influenced by old movies (a lot of John Wayne films are watched in Lagos). Redemption leads him on a rather shady path which promises big, easy money, and this seedy, rather gruesome underworld begins to engulf Elvis. The narrative moves from Elvis’ younger years in the 1970s, as his mother succumbs to cancer, and throughout the book are excerpts from his mother’s diary which includes recipes.
Elvis is such an unforgettable character. He is determined to succeed in his own way and educates himself through books. His dream of being an Elvis impersonator is a goal that is kind of funny and charming.
“He read books for different reasons and had them everywhere he was: one in his backpack, which he called his on-the-road book, usually one that held an inspirational message for him; one by his bed; and one he kept tucked in the hole in the wall in the toilet for those cool evenings when a gentle breeze actually made the smell there bearable enough to stay and read.”
I loved the images that Abani paints of Lagos and Elvis’ life. He has a keen eye for details, the sights, the sounds, the smells even. Elvis’ life is a harsh life, but one that is also vibrant and vivid. Graceland is a dark story but one with such life and hope. It will move you with its sadness and heartfelt grace.
Chris Abani’s work
Novels
* The Virgin of Flames
* GraceLand
* Masters of the Board
Novellas
* Becoming Abigail
* Song For Night
I read this book for the Global Reading Challenge 2011 (Africa)
The Bone People
“It’s a slow haunting tune; melancholy, yet it embraces the listener, drawing one onward rather than down.
He remembers it in the months to come, playing it so often in his mind that when he next picks up a guitar, his fingers settle into the melody without him meaning them to.”
This passage occurs late in this novel but it is one which quite adequately explains how I felt about this New Zealand novel. For it is a bit of a meandering sort, humming its own, rather odd, rather magical, little tune.
We started off on an unsteady foot, The Bone People and I, we were tripping off in different directions, and I was all too ready to lay it back on the pile and pick up something a bit more readable. It opens with rather separate…. for want of a better term…. odds and ends. The first page, three different passages, of a ‘he’, another ‘he’, and a ‘she’. The next page was a rather abstract two paragraphs, which only make sense to me now after reading the whole book.
I puzzled my way through the first few pages. It was only with the appearance of the mute Simon, whom Kerewin discovers in her tower, that some interest began to stir:
“In the window, standing stiff and straight like some weird saint in a stained gold window, is a child. A thin shockheaded person, haloed in hair, shrouded in the dying sunlight.
The eyes are invisible. It is sling, immobile.
Kerewin stares, shocked and gawping and speechless.
The thunder sounds again, louder, and a cloud covers the last of the sunlight. The room goes very dark.”
Rather dramatic isn’t it? And it is quite a dramatic story, with three characters (besides Simon and Kerewin, there is Joe, Simon’s unofficial foster father) who are so filled with emotions, said and unsaid (the three of them think and feel so much, their internal dialogue is laid out, slightly offset and differentiated with indented paragraphs- sometimes I’m not entirely sure which character is doing the thinking). This book is all about the emotions. The storyline itself is actually a little thin, nothing very much happens for quite a bit of the book. A quick summary: Kerewin (who’s part Maori, part European), Joe (who’s Maori) and Simon (who’s background is unknown) start out as very isolated individuals, they come together, but something happens and they break apart, but knowing that they kind of need each other, they reach out for each other again.
The Bone People is about the relationship that develops between these three, a rather convoluted, perhaps obsessive relationship. There is so much anger in this harsh landscape, and parts of the story were particularly disturbing and which made me put it down for a while and figure out if I really wanted to continue. I did. Their stories, their need for each other, tugged at the heartstrings. I felt for Simon, isolated from the rest of the kids, for Kerewin, who despite what she sometimes said and thought, and her hard exterior, was full of heart.
Was it worth the effort? The Bone People is a bit of a confusing read and can be cruel, but the three characters and the development of their relationships is well-written and moving.
This is my read for the New Zealand leg of the Reading the World Challenge. Just in time, I’ve finished all seven continents!
The Bone People – Keri Hulme
Borrowed from the library
The Caliph’s House
“There was a sadness in the stillness of dusk. The cafe was packed with long-faced men in robes sipping black coffee, smoking dark tobacco. A waiter weaved between the tables, tray balanced on upturned fingertips, glass balanced on tray. In that moment, day became night. The sitters drew deep on their cigarettes, coughed, and stared out at the street. Some were worrying, others dreaming, or just sitting in silence. The same ritual is played out each evening across Morocco, the desert kingdom in Africa’s northwest, nudged up against the Atlantic shore. As the last strains of sunlight dissipated, the chatter began again, the hum of calm voices breaking gently over the traffic.”
“The backstreet cafe in Casablanca was for me a place of mystery, a place with a soul, a place with danger. There was a sense that the safety nets had been cut away, that each citizen walked upon the high wire of this, the real world. I longed not merely to travel through it, but to live in such a city.”
Tahir Shah uproots his wife Rachana and two young children from England to Morocco, where his grandfather lived and died. They move into Dar Kalifa or the Caliph’s House and this book chronicles their first year in Casablanca, a story of jinns, exorcisms, house renovation, living next to a bidonville (a shanty town) and a gangster. Sounds entertaining enough.
It does start out well, mostly because I love the setting of Morocco and it was intriguing to read of someone who dared to take that leap and live in this beautiful, very different country. It was especially interesting to read about the refurbishing of the house, learning about how the artisans put together the traditional Moroccan bejmat tiles and the traditional plasterwork tadelakt, which required the purchase of many eggs. Shah was able to bring out all the little nuances of life, interactions and relationships with the people of Morocco.
The Caliph’s House is a pretty humorous read, although a lot of times I can’t help but wonder what goes on in that head of his. He makes a lot of silly mistakes, like wiring the architect the full amount he demands before the work is completed, and ordering a crateful of furniture from India after one drink too many. It can be a bit frustrating reading this book, for me, the height of bizarreness was when some “psuedo friends” arrive to stay, take over their bedroom resulting in Tahir and his family checking themselves into a hotel. I’ve never heard of anything like that before! These people are rather frustrating (and I don’t mean the pseudo friends). It makes for some entertaining reading, but in the end, got a bit too much for me.
But what I found most disconcerting was the seeming non-existence of his wife in this book. She appears only very occasionally, mostly to complain about something or give a little feedback (usually just a sentence). And then disappears again for pages and pages. I was unable to grasp a single idea about who she is, except for the fact that she’s from India. Oh and that on one occasion she cooked a lot of chicken curry. Really? It’s as if she doesn’t live there at all. We know far more about the jinn Qandisha than we do about his family. The experience of his family, was sorely missing in this book, and for me, resulted in an incomplete story. Pity.
This is my second read for the Moroccan leg of the Reading the World Challenge, and while a better read than the first one, it still was lacking something.
Library Loot (10 June 2010)
Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Eva and Marg that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library.
With a delivery of woodchips (the missing piece that will complete the backyard) due to arrive in that usual delivery time frame of several hours of the afternoon, I made a hurried stop over at the library (and the post office and Target) to pick up four holds – and yeah, you guessed it, I couldn’t help grabbing myself a few more off the shelves.
Another Sea, Another Shore: Persian Stories of Migration
My search on the library’s catalogue for works by Kader Abdolah, author of The House of The Mosque (which I first heard of at Rob Around Books) resulted in this find, which unfortunately was the only one!
In today’s world, with its often fluid national borders, many outstanding literary works have given voice to the life experience of immigrants, whose very being challenges traditional notions of national identity and culture. The recent immigration of Iranians all over the world has carved a space for a distinctly Iranian version of this vital wellspring of contemporary writing.
The stories in this collection are varied in their voices and themes and treat a number of issues such as national identity, gender, race, and class. Some capture childhood recollections; others reminisce about the homeland and the life left behind. All of them reflect efforts to reinvent new and multiple identities, as well as multicultural and borderless spaces.
The authors include both established and new voices: Fahimeh Farsaie, Dariush Karegar, Nasim Khaksar, Farideh Kheradmand, Pari Mansuri, Mehrnoush Mazarei, Qodsi Qazinur, Marjan Riahi, Said, Azar Shahab, Mahasti Shahrokhi, Mohammad Asef Soltanzadeh, and Goli Taraqi.
The Caliph’s House: A Year in Casablanca
A non-fiction read for the Moroccan leg of the Reading The World Challenge.
In the tradition of A Year in Provence and Under the Tuscan Sun, acclaimed English travel writer Tahir Shah shares a highly entertaining account of making an exotic dream come true. By turns hilarious and harrowing, here is the story of his family’s move from the gray skies of London to the sun-drenched city of Casablanca, where Islamic tradition and African folklore converge–and nothing is as easy as it seems….
Inspired by the Moroccan vacations of his childhood, Tahir Shah dreamed of making a home in that astonishing country. At age thirty-six he got his chance. Investing what money he and his wife, Rachana, had, Tahir packed up his growing family and bought Dar Khalifa, a crumbling ruin of a mansion by the sea in Casablanca that once belonged to the city’s caliph, or spiritual leader.
With its lush grounds, cool, secluded courtyards, and relaxed pace, life at Dar Khalifa seems sure to fulfill Tahir’s fantasy–until he discovers that in many ways he is farther from home than he imagined. For in Morocco an empty house is thought to attract jinns, invisible spirits unique to the Islamic world. The ardent belief in their presence greatly hampers sleep and renovation plans, but that is just the beginning. From elaborate exorcism rituals involving sacrificial goats to dealing with gangster neighbors intent on stealing their property, the Shahs must cope with a new culture and all that comes with it.
Endlessly enthralling, The Caliph’s House charts a year in the life of one family who takes a tremendous gamble. As we follow Tahir on his travels throughout the kingdom, from Tangier to Marrakech to the Sahara, we discover a world of fierce contrasts that any true adventurer would be thrilled to call home.
Bittersweet: Recipes and Tales from a Life in Chocolate
Oh, chocolate, how I love you. A couple of weekends ago, a friend and I made some cocoa brownies using this recipe adapted from Medrich’s cookbook by amazing food blogger Smitten Kitchen (here’s the link to the recipe). The brownies were decadently rich but so simple to make. I never would have thought that brownies using cocoa (and not actual chocolate) could taste that great. It does help if you use better quality cocoa powder of course! I’m looking forward to seeing what else Medrich has up her sleeve.
It is hard, today, to imagine a time when the word bittersweet was rarely spoken, when 70 percent of the chocolate purchased by Americans was milk chocolate. Today’s world of chocolate is a much larger universe, where not only is the quality better and variety wider, but the very composition of the chocolate has changed.
To do justice to these new chocolates, which contain more pure chocolate and less sugar, we need a fresh approach to chocolate desserts—a new kind of recipe—and someone to crack the code for substituting one chocolate for another in both new and classic recipes. Alice Medrich, the “First Lady of Chocolate,” delivers.
With nearly 150 recipes—each delicious and foolproof, no matter your level of expertise—BitterSweet answers every chocolate question, teaches every technique, confides every secret, satisfies every craving. You’ll marvel that recipes as basic as brownies and chocolate cake, mint chocolate chip ice cream and chocolate mousse, can still surprise and excite you, and that soufflés, chocolate panna cotta, even pasta sauces can be so dramatically flavorful.
For the last thirty years, Alice Medrich has been learning, teaching, and sharing what she loves and understands about chocolate. BitterSweet is the culmination of her life in chocolate thus far: revolutionary recipes, profound knowledge, and charming tales of a chocolate life.
The Windup Girl
All those accolades… will it live up to them?
*Winner of the 2010 Nebula Award for Best Novel*
In this Time Magazine top 10 book of the year, Anderson Lake is a company man, AgriGen’s Calorie Man in Thailand. Under cover as a factory manager, Anderson combs Bangkok’s street markets in search of foodstuffs thought to be extinct, hoping to reap the bounty of history’s lost calories. There, he encounters Emiko. Emiko is the Windup Girl, a strange and beautiful creature. One of the New People, Emiko is not human; instead, she is an engineered being, creche-grown and programmed to satisfy the decadent whims of a Kyoto businessman, but now abandoned to the streets of Bangkok. Regarded as soulless beings by some, devils by others, New People are slaves, soldiers, and toys of the rich in a chilling near future in which calorie companies rule the world, the oil age has passed, and the side effects of bio-engineered plagues run rampant across the globe. What Happens when calories become currency? What happens when bio-terrorism becomes a tool for corporate profits, when said bio-terrorism’s genetic drift forces mankind to the cusp of post-human evolution? In The Windup Girl, award-winning author Paolo Bacigalupi returns to the world of The Calorie Man; (Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award-winner, Hugo Award nominee, 2006) and Yellow Card Man (Hugo Award nominee, 2007) in order to address these poignant questions. This title has been nominated for both the Hugo and Nebula awards. This title was also on the best book lists of the year for Library Journal and Publishers Weekly.
Little Nothings 1: The Curse of the Umbrella (v. 1)
Never heard of this graphic novel or its creator before, but looked interesting!
The great talent behind the new generation in Europe, the Dungeon series, A.L.I.E.E.E.N. and Mr. O, pours his heart out in funny snippets of everyday life. His paranoia, little annoyances, big annoyances, chase of rainbows, love of comics, travel impressions from around the world, dealing with kids, being a kid: it’s all about life as we know it. A collection from his comics blog that expands his palette with full color painting, one can only be awed at Trondheim’s uncanny sense of observation and relate to all his experiences closely. Another touch of genius by one of today’s best and most influential comic artists.
Lucky
Another graphic novel that caught my eye as I scanned the shelves.
Gabrielle Bell fascinatingly documents the mundane details of her below-minimum-wage, twentysomething existence in Brooklyn, New York, with a subtle humor. Her simple, unadorned drawing style, heavy narration, and biting wit chronicle transient roommates who communicate only through Post-it notes; aspiring artists who sublet tiny rooms in leaky, greasy broken-down border-house loft apartments crawling with bugs, cats, and bad art. Bell tackles a string of forgettable, unrelated jobs—including nude modeling, artist’s assistant, art teacher, and jewelry maker—that only serve to bolster her despair, boredom, and discomfort in her own skin.Bell’s self-scrutiny leads her to dream sequences that allow her to rise above her banal actuality and hyperawareness. She fantasizes about her vision of a perfect world as she becomes the accomplished artist and world traveler she longs to be. Bell’s daily comics allow her to escape the harsh, judgmental gaze of the world and the monotony of daily life. Her unpolished art speaks to a desire to record all the messy details while the pain and confusion are still fresh.
Coming of age amid the zine revolution, cartoonist Gabrielle Bell has been creating her comics to much acclaim, even winning an Ignatz Award for the self-published serialization of Lucky.
A Vocation and a Voice: Stories 
A book that is older than me.
This collection of short stories includes “The Story of an Hour” about the author’s childhood, “An Egyptian Cigarette”, the story of a drug trip and the title piece about a sweet-voiced soprano who learns about adult life.
Have you read any of these books? What did you think of them?
What did you get from your library this week?
See more Library Loot here
Anil’s Ghost
“Anil had read documents and news reports, full of tragedy, and she had now lived abroad long enough to interpret Sri Lanka with a long-distance gaze. But here it was a more complicated world morally. The streets were still streets, the citizens remained citizens. They shopped, changed jobs, laughed. Yet the darkest Greek tragedies were innocent compared with what was happening here. Heads on stakes. Skeletons dug out of a cocoa pit in Matale. At university Anil had translated lines from Archilochus - in the hospitality of war we left them their dead to remember us by. But here there was no such gesture to the families of the dead, not even the information of who the enemy was.”
Anil Tissera is a native Sri Lankan who left her country at 18 and is returning after 15 years as a forensic anthropologist investigating political murders.
This is a story of juxtaposition. There is that lush and idyllic Sri Lanka, with its monasteries and temples. It is a beautiful, extravagantly abundant setting over which the spectre of war hovers. Death, blood lurks in the jungles, on the streets, in the hospitals:
“He would lie there conscious of the noises from the surrounding ocean of trees. Farther away were the wars of terror, the gunman in love with the sound of their shells, where the main purpose of war had become war.”
I can’t help but fall for this place Ondaatje so vividly describes. How in movie theatres in Sri Lanka, “if there was a great scene – usually a musical number or an extravagant fight – the crowd would yell out ‘Replay! Replay!’ or ‘Rewind! Rewind!’ till the theatre manager and projectionist were forced to comply.” Or how Anil begins her day:
“She woke early the next morning in her rented house on Ward Place and walked into the darkness of the garden, following the sound of koha birds busy with their claims and proclamations. She stood there drinking her tea. Then walked to the main road as a light rain began. When a three-wheeler taxi stopped by her she slipped into it. The taxi fled away, squeezing itself into every narrow possibility of the dense traffic. She held on to the straps tightly, the rain at her ankles from its open sides. The bajaj was cooler than an air-conditioned car, and she liked the throaty ducklike sound of the horns.”
I’ve only previously read Ondaatje’s The English Patient and have often hesitated in picking up his other books, I’m not sure why. After reading Anil’s Ghost, I was awed by his lyrical writing and the complexity (but still accessible) of his characters. There were such great little details that made these characters come to life. Anil, for example, bought her name from her brother with cigarettes and rupees at the age of 13. Gamini, a doctor and her colleague Sarath’s brother, was nicknamed ‘Meeya’ or Mouse as a child, and who later in life “felt himself on a boat of demons and himself to be the only clearheaded and sane person there. He was a perfect participant in the war”.
This book doesn’t travel too far in terms of a plot and it does take a little while to sink into, plus the shifting perspective can be a little confusing. However, Ondaatje has written such a beautiful, rich book that it would be such a shame to pass it by.
Anil’s Ghost is my second read for the Sri Lankan leg of the Reading the World Challenge. It was a perfect fit for this challenge, bringing the country of Sri Lanka to life.
The Honorary Consul
It is with much reluctance that I write about this book. It started out well but got bogged down about 3/4 of the way through, and while well-written, didn’t quite allow me to sink into it. I felt like I was an onlooker, standing on the edge of the crowd, trying to peer over the shoulders of the many in front of me, trying to see what was going on, and merely getting glimpses.
Perhaps I ought to start flipping through these books before I actually chuck them in the basket when I’m at the library. However, since it started out well enough, would that have made any difference? I would’ve still checked it out of the library and brought it home with me.
It has been such a long time since I’ve read Greene. The first was The Quiet American 
Fortnum is the Honorary Consul, long forgotten by his government in this sleepy border town in Argentina. A botched kidnapping by Paraguayan revolutionaries who were trying to capture the American ambassador means that Fortnum’s main connection to the outside world is Dr Plarr, a British-Paraguayan doctor. What complicates things is that Fortnum’s young wife, a former prostitute, is carrying Plarr’s baby, although Fortnum doesn’t quite know that. Anyway, there are funny moments and interesting characters (almost all were male) and good writing, which should all be elements for a good book, shouldn’t they? I don’t know, perhaps it was my reading mood at the time or maybe I was just juggling too many books and wasn’t quite committed to this one as I should’ve been.
This is my first read for the Argentinian leg of the Reading the World Challenge. However, perhaps this wasn’t the best of books to kick off the Argentinian leg of the Reading the World Challenge. I’ll be looking for another Argentinian read soon!
