Category Archives: The Book on The Nightstand

Nuri-el Alfi is a teenage boy living with his father after his mother passes away. On a holiday to the Magda Marina beach in Egypt, Alexandria, he meets and falls in love with Mona, a 26 year old woman who later will marry his father. Then one day his father disappears and an avalanche of questions seems to overwhelm Nuri. Where is his father, who took him, and most importantly, is he still alive?

The action takes place in Egypt, Switzerland and England. The small number of characters make the novel easy to follow – the enigmatic father, whose secretive life style is revealed in small doses but never in its entirety, the furtive glimpses of his first wife, Nuri’s mother, provided here and there around the novel, her unexplained death, and the role of Naima who is not just a housekeeper, all seem to come together towards the end.
A feeling of absence and longing pervades every page, the disappearance of the father transforming the son into an emotionally crippled young man living in the past, trying to cling to the memory of his father by smoking the same cigarettes, wearing the clothes he left behind, looking at photographs. Smells, memories, gestures, become ties that bind Nuri to a brief past he shared with his father and he is reluctant to let them go.

I found the novel somehow disjointed; halfway through the story I got frustrated with the bits and pieces that didn’t fit and others that didn’t make sense – too many questions and so much mystery. Some of those questions got answered in the end – just enough so that I wasn’t left with a total feeling of incompleteness. I was intrigued and I did a little research on the author, only to discover that his own father, who was involved in politics, had been abducted, his whereabouts known only years later.
Hisham Matar is probably the first Libyan author whose work I have read. It is very likely that I never would have picked up this novel on my own, but a book club I recently joined chose this as the book-of-the-month and so I gave it a try. I have mixed feelings about it – the story did not appeal to me, too gloomy and hopeless, but the occasional sparkle of the language made reading it bearable; this one paragraph about Nuri’s mother I particularly liked:

“Her hands, the pale thin fingers that never seemed to match her strength, would be frozen twigs. She would tuck them between my knees or, if I were lying on my back, slide them behind my lower back, the place that is still hers.”

And another one:

“The world had to be sliced into hours to fill, otherwise you could go mad with loneliness.”

My review feels incomplete, more like a jumble of ideas glued together but that’s ok – it took me a while to reach the final page and I had days when a sort of dread was creeping on me, knowing that I had to finish it because I hate giving up on a book, especially one that is not even that long. At just under 250 pages, it should have been a quick read. Alas, it wasn’t. Or maybe I just needed something more cheerful.
And that brought a question to mind: how do you feel about gloomy stories? Do you enjoy these kinds of books or stay away from them? Or perhaps the degree of sadness doesn’t matter as long as the author keeps the story interesting?

*Read in April, 2012

You can also read Athira’s review here

Since I started blogging I have tried to post as regularly as I could and while I have read quite a fair number of books last year, the last time I did a summary was for my Best Books of 2011 post. And so I had a nice surprise to see my name nominated for the 7X7 Link Award, by writer Andrew Blackman (whose book, On the Holloway Road, is on my TBR list) and thought it was about time I got a shovel and started digging through the archives to get some answers for this fun meme.
Before I start, here are the rules:

1: Tell everyone something about yourself that nobody knows.

3: Pass this on to 7 fellow bloggers.

After some research, picture selecting and some deliberating, here are my answers:

1. I love to bake, and while this isn’t exactly a big secret, the part I actually enjoy the most is the decorating. I have a special fondness for whole wheat muffins and cookies, which not even the very high temperature can dampen. After all, I’m living in a country with a perpetual summer and baking is not easy but oh, so rewarding!
Cute, isn’t it? Here’s another one: the first time I saw a live, full grown monitor lizard I was looking out the window and the first thought that crossed my mind was: Oh my God, what’s that crocodile doing in the yard? Then I ran for the camera but by the time I got back, the lizard had disappeared. A while later the penny dropped and I realized crocodiles don’t have a snakelike tongue, but in my excitement that detail was completely forgotten.

2. The Most Beautiful Piece. There’s a mango tree in my front yard and every year it bears fruit but last year most of them just fell while still small and green. Weeks of waiting for that perfect sweet fruit left me with nothing. And then, this year, an amazing thing happened: in February, the tree was so full of fruit that I had to give some to the neighbors because once they fall, the soft skin breaks apart and the ants eat them or they start rotting. And not only I had enough mangoes to eat for a month or more, but they also had a pinkish tinge, something I haven’t seen before. This story is about that tree.

3. Most Helpful Piece. That might be Best Books of 2011 but I think it was mostly helpful for me, as I discovered interesting new blogs to read.

4. Most Popular Piece. If I were to judge by the comments, I would say the one at no. 3 but people seem to stop by and read Haunts – Reliquaries of the Dead quite often.

5. Most Controversial Piece. Nothing in this department, I’m afraid.

6. Most Surprisingly Successful Piece. For some reason people seemed to like One Day, by David Nicholls but it’s definitely not on my top 10. The movie didn’t do much to change my opinion, either.

7. Most Underrated Piece. That must be the whole Wandering Thoughts section which consists of verse.

8. Most Pride-Worthy Piece. That’s an easy one. Farundell, by L.R. Fredericks – I liked the book so much I wanted to know more about it so I contacted the author for a written interview. I was so happy when she agreed to answer my questions that I walked around the whole day with a big silly grin on my face. It was one of the best experiences that came from starting this blog.

The bloggers I am passing this on to are:

1. Carl@stainlesssteeldroppings A site that is updated quite often and includes movie & book reviews and also The Once Upon a Time Challenge which consists of reviewing books and movies based on the classic fairy tales.

2. Jenners@Life…With Books She has a great sense of humour and writes posts about her experiences and the books she reads. Her funny posts always cheer me up.

3. Hannah@Wayfaring Chocolate Here’s a girl who loves baking and posts some mouthwatering recipes on her blog. She takes great pictures, too.

4. Charlie Louie@Hotly Spiced A great blog about food (with recipes, yum!) and life in general.

5. M—–L@Outgoing Signals I like this blog not only for the posts, which cover book reviews, music and other random stuff, but also for the comments. That is also the place where I first found out about Babo, the cutest ugliest doll I’ve seen so far.

6. Jov@JoV’s Book Pyramid A book blog with quite a mix of classic and contemporary authors.

7. Olduvai@Olduvai Reads A new blog I’ve just discovered. Olduvai and I bonded over our love for mangosteens and I look forward to reading more of her posts which combine book reviews and snippets of her life.

Hi. I’ve been absent from my writing desk for a while, and if you come here every now and then, you’ll see it’s been almost a month. A month! While I haven’t stopped reading, more often than not just finishing a book and starting on another, it has been somewhat of a challenge to find the time to actually sit down and put the ideas (and the scraps of paper on which I wrote down some thoughts and impressions from the books) together into a coherent review. Well, today I managed to write a brand new review of a book I liked very, very much. Here it is:

Neil Gaiman is a name that’s been popping up on my reading radar more and more often these days, and even though I wasn’t very taken with his novel American Gods, I absolutely love his short stories. This collection is a compilation of 31 stories based on famous fairy tales and kids’ stories. And what makes this collection even more appealing is that the author tells the reader how he got the idea for each story – a statue he saw which became “The Sweeper of Dreams”, something he listened to on the radio right before he dozed off one day and the first thing he heard when he woke up – that was the starting point for “We Can Get Them for You Wholesale”, or a story he was commissioned to write for a magazine. These are some of my favorite stories from the book:

The first one that comes forward (yet again – I’ve come across it in another short story collection, By Blood We Live – Edited by John Joseph Adams) is Snow, Glass, Apples, in which the classic story of Snow White gets reworked into a vampire tale. All the known elements are there: the king and his little daughter, the stepmother and her magic mirror, the dwarves, the poisoned apple, even the prince that brings the princess back to life. How Gaiman succeeds in bringing these elements together to create a story that is very different from the sweet happily-ever-after original, is worthy of praise. It was a pleasure to read, again.

The Price – is about a stray cat who is adopted by a family who lives in the countryside. Unlike all the other cats that have found shelter at the house, Black Cat is different – as days go by, his appearance changes: he has missing patches of fur, gashes on his face, a mutilated ear and the list goes on. With every day, and in spite of repeated visits to the vet for treatment, he seems to be getting worse. Intrigued by his wounds and thinking he can protect the animal, the owner decides to stay awake one night and see what kind of enemy Black Cat is fighting. What he sees is nothing like he ever imagined. Or I, for that matter.

Troll Bridge – In this new take on the famous Norwegian fairy tale “Three Billy Goats Gruff”, Gaiman replaces the goats with a 7 year old boy who wanders far from home on a beautiful summer day. His travels bring him to a bridge surrounded by “fields and wheat and trees”, the hiding place for a huge troll. I’m going to eat your life, Jack, says the troll and he means it. I have wondered why the author used “eat your life” instead of “eat you up”. There’s something tricky here, I thought, and it was. A very good story set in modern day London, with an unexpected ending.

We Can Get Them for You Wholesale – How far would you go to punish someone? Peter Pinter goes quite far, when he finds out his fiancée is cheating on him. Finding a solution to the problem seems to be an easy task – all he needs is someone who will take his rival out of the picture. Forever. But then, how to resist when the dirty deed can be done for a discount? All he needs to do is find somebody else he would like to get rid of. It’s not long before he makes quite a list, and while this is a creepy story, I also found it amusing when I think how often we are tempted by that word. Discount.

Two very short excellent stories (and by “excellent” I mean WOW) are:

The Sweeper of Dreams – in which the author paints a picture of an actual sweeper who comes and does his job after we have left the land of dreams, leaving the world we inhabit at night clean and ready for a new dream. Practical advice is given on how to treat the sweeper and what happens if you upset him and he never comes back. The consequences are terrible. You do not want to mess with this guy.

and

Nicholas Was… – not as happy as you’d think. In just a few words, the legend of Saint Nicholas who brings gifts to children gets a good shake. I did not envy him.

Being a fan of classical vampire stories/verses, I just have to mention Vampire Sestina, a poem, which is actually a lament and also a story in verse. The beginning is beautiful; the ending, perfection. I’ll leave you with something in between:

“I said I would not hurt you. Am I stone
To leave you prey to time and to the world?
I offered you a truth beyond your dreams
While all you had to offer was your love.”

What do you think of the stories mentioned here? Have you read Smoke and Mirrors or anything else by Neil Gaiman?

*Read in February 2012

I’ve come across The Yellow Wallpaper in a collection of short stories, The Oxford Book of Gothic Tales, and it left such a vivid impression in my memory that when I saw this book (a whole book!) by the same author I just had to read it.

This book is a collection of 20 stories and various fragments from the author’s biography, The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1935). It starts with The Yellow Wallpaper, a story of a woman who finds herself slipping into madness after being confined to her bed to rest following the birth of her child. Day after day and night after night, with nothing to do but rest, which according to her physician husband was the best cure for her illness, she feels increasingly frustrated by monotony and boredom. And having an active and imaginative mind, she focuses her attention on the room’s deteriorated wallpaper. With each passing day she is convinced that someone is watching her, someone hiding in the intricate pattern of the old and torn wallpaper.

On a pattern like this, by daylight, there is a lack of sequence, a defiance of law, that is a constant irritant to a normal mind.
The color is hideous enough, and unreliable enough, and infuriating enough, but the pattern is torturing.
***
It slaps you in the face, knocks you down, and tramples upon you. It is like a bad dream.
***
There is one marked peculiarity about this paper, a thing nobody seems to notice but myself and that it changes as the light changes.
When the sun shoots through the east window – I always watch for that first long, straight ray – it changes so quickly that I never can quite believe it. That is why I watch it always.
***
I really have discovered something at last. Through watching so much at night, when it changes so, I have finally found out. The front pattern does move – and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it!

Written in 1890, at a time when a woman suffering from depression was treated with bed rest and as little intellectual stimulus as possible, this story comes as a revelation of what really goes on in the patient’s mind. Based on the author’s personal experience, it gives a detailed account of how she felt after her daughter’s birth, the severe depression she was battling and how the doctor’s recommendation utterly failed to improve her mental health.
The ending fitted very well with the gloomy, constricted, depressing atmosphere of the story – I’ve read the story twice and liked it just as much the second time. The writing is beautiful, not overly florid like you’d find in a classic story but not quite modern either – it strikes a beautiful balance and the most important thing of all, it creates a bridge between the writer and the reader that makes it easy to relate to the ideas that can be drawn from the story.

I enjoyed most of the other stories in the book, stories of women trying to find their place in society while at the same time living a fulfilling life that involved traveling, socializing and pursuing artistic occupations, things that would take them away from the traditional role of wife and mother they were expected to conform to.

In The Unexpected (1890), a young man becomes so smitten with “beautiful Mary” that he will do anything to marry her. And in the end, when he does get his heart’s desire, discovers she is not the “prudish New England girl” he thought she was, but a woman with artistic aspirations as great as his own.

An Unnatural Mother (1895) tells the story of a woman who is forced to make a terrible choice which leads to her death. Her decision is discussed and disapproved of by a group of women who knew her and criticize her upbringing, her marriage and finally the decision that took her life. Unable to see the big picture and the sacrifice she had to make, the women consider her a bad example and the attempt of the unmarried daughter of one of them who tries to bring about a different perspective is promptly dismissed.

Three Thanksgivings is the story of a woman who makes some drastic changes in order to be able to keep the house she’s always lived in. With two grown children who want her to come and live with them, and a creditor who offers to marry her in order to help pay for the house, this is the story of a woman determined to hold on to her independence even if that means she will have to resort to a daring plan. My hat goes off to you, Mrs. Morrison.

Turned – Mrs Marroner thought she was leading a charmed life – she had a loving husband, a beautiful home and a nice girl, Gerta, to help with the housework. And when two letters from the traveling Mr Marroner arrive at the house, the sweet illusion of a happy marriage comes apart in a flash.

An Extinct Angel compares women with angels, from the clothes they have to wear:

The amount of physical labor of a severe and degrading sort required of one of these bright spirits, was amazing. Certain kinds of work – always and essentially dirty – were relegated wholly to her. Yet one of her first and most rigid duties was the keeping of her angelic robes spotlessly clean.

to their duties towards the humans:

…but the fact was that the angels waited on the human creatures in every form of menial service, doing things as their natural duty which the human creature loathed and scorned.

and finally giving a reason to their extinction as a race:

But little by little, owing to the unthought-of consequences of repeated intermarriage between the angel and the human being, the angel longed for, found and ate the fruit of the forbidden tree of knowledge.

Mrs Merrill’s Duties asks an important question: can a woman be a good wife, a caring mother and a good friend, while at the same time trying to follow her own dreams? You will have to read the story to find out.

When I Was a Witch is an interesting story of one woman’s wishes come true. One day she discovers she has the power to change things by wishing, but this comes to an end when one of her wishes is different from the pattern the others were following. An interesting perspective on the nature of wishes, and a little unsettling.

These are just a few of the stories I liked from this collection; there is but one or two which I didn’t like as much as the others but I would have been surprised if I ended up liking them all.

*

The last part of the book, called “SELECTIONS FROM THE AUTHOR’S BIOGRAPHY” offers details about Charlotte’s life, with selected passages from various chapters describing her childhood, marriage, her depression, her work as a feminist, writing and traveling to give lectures at various gatherings. An ardent supporter of women’s rights, she wrote short stories, plays, essays and novels, trying to encourage women to see beyond their domestic roles as wives and mothers. This part of the book helped me to understand the stories better. To read a story is fine. To see where that story came from, the personal experience that was the germinating seed, growing into something impressive, that was much more satisfying for me as a reader and it added a depth to the stories itself, that certain something that would surely have been missed otherwise.

*

She was the niece of Harriett Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a fact mentioned in her autobiography where she described the house her aunt lived in and where, as a child, Charlotte had visited: “From her dainty flower pictures I got my first desire to paint,….”
Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a woman with unconventional ideas. Growing up in a broken family, with a childhood scarred by her parents’ separation followed by infrequent visits from her father, trying to obey an authoritative mother, she was a spirited child who once broke the silence in a classroom by saying a word out loud – asked by her teacher why she did that, she replied: “I wanted to see what would happen”. She had the courage to forge her own path, through depression, financial difficulties and criticism of her work.

These are just a few of the passages I liked.

After the break-up of her marriage:

Thirty years old. Made a wrong marriage – lots of people do. Am heavily damaged, but not dead. May live a long time. It is intellectually conceivable that I may recover strength enough to do some part of my work. I will assume this to be true and act on it. And I did.

On writing:

The writing similarly is easy and swift expression, running at the rate of about a thousand words an hour for three hours – then it stops, no use trying to squeeze out any more. Any attempt at forced work stops everything for days.

On depression:

A sympathetic lady once remarked, ‘Yes, it is a sad thing to see a strong mind in a weak body.’ Whereat I promptly picked her up and carried her around the room. ‘Please understand’, said I, that what ails me is a weak mind in a strong body.’ But she didn’t understand, they never do. Only those near enough to watch the long, blank months of idleness, the endless hours of driveling solitaire, the black empty days and staring nights, know.

On life and death:

I had not the least objection to dying. But I did not propose to die of this, so I promptly bought sufficient chloroform as a substitute. Human life consists in mutual service. No grief, misfortune or “broken heart” is excuse for cutting off one’s life while any power of service remains. But when all usefulness is over, when one is assured of unavoidable and imminent death, it is the simplest of human rights to choose a quick and easy death in place of a slow and horrible one.

I am most unconcernedly willing to die when I get ready. I have no faintest belief in personal immortality – no interest in nor desire for it.

The one predominant duty is to find one’s work and do it, and I have striven mightily at that.

*Read in February 2012

It’s been a while since I wrote a review, so that one day when I looked at my desk and saw five books (five, when did that happen?!) waiting there in a neat little pile I decided it was about time I said something about them before I forget. So there it is, I’m starting with the last book I finished.

One Day – David Nicholls

In my defense I have to say I didn’t choose this book. Some colleagues at work recommended it as an easy read (that, and also the fact that the term “chick-lit” was mentioned did ring a warning bell in my head which I chose to ignore) and one of them offered to lend it to me so I didn’t say no. I got bored about halfway but then having made it so far I decided to keep going in the hope that it will get better. It did, somewhere towards the end – there was a scene that made me feel something else other than annoyance and for that reason I’ll give it a 3 star rating instead of 2 (out of 5).

The book is about Emma and Dexter who spend a night together in their twenties, just after graduating from college. They remain friends for nearly twenty years, sharing events from their lives – fame, relationships, marriage, children, alcohol abuse and a thousand little details that make up a friendship. It is obvious that they are attracted to each other but the timing always seems to be off or they are unwilling to just come right out and say what they really feel. Their conversations have an edgy feel to them, being somewhere between amusing and annoying – sometimes it’s like watching a tennis match and trying to decide if they are playing a friendly game or they just want to win one no matter what.

The story flows along without major hiccups, there are even some references to books – Wuthering Heights is one but is not spoken about in flattering terms, Howards End is another – currently on my TBR pile but after reading A Room with a View I find myself reluctant to pick it up; a paragraph from Dickens’ Great Expectations makes and appearance right before Part One and there’s also one from Tess of the D’Urbervilles.

The reason why I stuck with the book to the end was that I wanted to see what happens – will they remain just friends or will they give love a chance? The end was unpredictable and I felt somehow rewarded for making it through to the last page.
The movie version was playing in the cinemas here not long ago but somehow I missed it. A friend said it was better than the book. Who knows, maybe I’ll watch it one day.

*Read in February 2012

I’m starting to like short stories more and more. They are very refreshing, especially after a big book. However, I have never read a collection like this one. The stories are so short that I found myself wondering how the writers managed to express an idea in so very few words. And because the stories are so short, some of them only half a page or even less, the connection with the reader is made quickly, with detailed paragraphs which drew me in from the very first words.

In Heartland, by Daphne Beal, there’s a striking paragraph with an amazing contrast:

“In New Orleans, the air has body it’s so thick. It’s only March, but as we ride from the airport past houses that look like someone’s taken a baseball bat to them, trees burst with white and pink blossoms, unabashed, and strange beauty is everywhere.”

Little Brother, by Bruce Holland Rogers, is a story about a boy getting a little brother as a Christmas present. But as innocent as that may sound, it really wasn’t, and as the story progressed I had the feeling that something was wrong. Not until the last sentence did I get to find out what it was and I have to admit, that was unexpected and unsettling. This was my favorite story.

Currents, by Hannah Bottomy Voskuil, is an unusual story in the way it’s told – like playing a video of a wave in reverse – I read it once and then again, backwards. I wonder if the author wrote it using the normal sequence of events and then just rewrote it starting with the end.

Accident, by Dave Eggers, is, most of all, an emotional encounter. The collision of two cars makes the driver of one of them aware of something missing in his life: a connection with people.

Bullhead, by Leigh Allison Wilson, is about a woman remembering a long lost love. She not only remembers it but clings to the memory with the desperation of one who lives in a fantasy world. I loved the last paragraph:

“Every story is true and a lie. The true part of this one is: Love and the memory of love can’t be drowned. The lie part is that this is a good thing.”

After He Left, by Matt Hlinak, one of the shortest stories in the book, is about half a page long. The strangest thing about it is that on my way home I saw a dead sparrow – just like the girl in the story – and when I did, my thoughts flew back to the words on that half page and I saw it too, the world moving fast, impatient and oblivious to life and its endings.

Forgotten, by Anne Mazer, captures the essence of childhood play so beautifully:

“All day they followed paths, forded streams, and climbed trees. They discovered countries, crossed oceans and desserts, explored jungles teeming with life. They were animal and human, villain and hero, rich and poor, fearless and timid. They were born and died hundreds of times. New races of people spilled from their fingers. They tunneled under mountains, built and destroyed worlds, flew to the moon and sun, and reached the beginnings and ends of time.”

There are many more wonderful stories in the book but I’m not going to run through all. Some of them, like the ones mentioned above, struck a chord with me; others I enjoyed for their flow, or characters or the rhythm of the words.
Every story in the book centers on childhood or adolescence: fragments of life seen through a youngster’s eyes, a first love, the lure of the virtual world, teen pregnancy, the loss of a parent, a birthday celebration. Stories tied with emotion, loss, love and regret, stories about a time we all went through. Stories that made me remember my own childhood, summer days spent lying under a tree on a blanket with a book in my hands, golden plums I ate half-peeled pretending they were ice-cream, the smell of grass and of a big black dog with a spatter of white on its chest who found its untimely death under the wheels of a car.
A very good book that I will certainly read again. I already went back to reread some of the stories and they were just as good as the first time.

*Read in January 2012

2011 was an incredible reading journey. My daily commute gave me ample time to read and I have spent every possible minute with my head in a book. I consider myself very lucky to have been able to read so many amazing books and I’ve tried to take away something useful from each and every one of them, even the ones I didn’t like that much. Writing reviews has helped me keep track of them and also to realize what genres I’m most attracted to. This year I managed to read 60 books, two of them not reviewed (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson and Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King – this last one I’ve read in 2010 and the next year I just browsed through it so I don’t consider it as “read in 2011”).

Here’s a list of my favorites:

The most beautiful love story: The Gargoyle – Andrew Davidson
Favorite classic: The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
A book that made me cry: Little Bee – Chris Cleave
The best opening line and also the best book of the year: Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury
The best book that is part of a series: Farundell – L.R. Fredericks (review & author interview) (I can’t wait for the next one, it comes out this year!)
The best story: Drood – Dan Simmons Part I and Part II
The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver Part I and Part II
Shantaram – Gregory David Roberts
Sorry, I couldn’t pick just one.

Best short story collection: Haunts – Reliquaries of the Dead, edited by Stephen Jones
The shortest book: The Woman in Black – Susan Hill (160 pages)
The longest books: Drood, by Dan Simmons (976 pages) and The Passage – Justin Cronin (963 pages)

Other books that left a lasting impression:

Under The Dome – Stephen King
Burmese Days – George Orwell
Man and Wife – Tony Parsons
The Oxford Book of Gothic Tales
The Kill – Émile Zola
The Little Stranger – Sarah Waters
Letters from Thailand – Botan (Supa Sirisingh)

I’m definitely a fan of Gothic stories, contemporary or classic. Ghosts, haunted houses, mysteries, noises in the dark, if a book has at least one of these, I want to read it. Chick lit books are not really my type. I’ve read a couple of them last year – they’re ok but not something I’d feel compelled to read. YA books don’t really appeal to me but I won’t say no if one comes my way. It’s just not something that I would buy.
Drood gave me an appetite for more of Charles Dickens’s stories and also Dan Simmons’. The Woman in White made me curious to try more books by Wilkie Collins. Vampire books are also high on my list and I won’t say no to love stories either.

The first book I bought in 2012 was Blueeyedboy by Joanne Harris. I’ve wanted to read at least one of her books, ever since I watched the movie Chocolat. Burmese Days, by George Orwell and Secret Histories – Finding Geroge Orwell in a Burmese Teashop, by Emma Larkin, made me add Burma to the list of countries I want to visit.
Letters from Thailand resonated with me because I’ve been living in Bangkok for quite a few years and I could identify with the main character in many aspects. A good book for anyone who likes immigrant stories and is interested in Thai/Chinese culture.

I look forward to a new year of reading – if it’s at least as good as 2011 that would be great!
Have you read any of the books mentioned here? What was your favorite book of 2011?

There is a bunch of books I finished a while ago but somehow didn’t get around to review them. They’ve been sitting on my desk, near the computer, for quite a while and I didn’t want to put them back on the shelves with the other books until I reviewed them so here it goes:

The Little Stranger, by Sarah Waters

An old house, a family trying to keep up with the changing times, a love story – it seemed like the perfect book for me. I bought it in a second-hand bookstore after trying to decide which one of the Sarah Waters novels to pick.
I loved this book – the tragedy of the Ayres family who lived at Hundreds Hall (beautiful name for a house, don’t you think), mother, daughter and son, trying to live in a present that didn’t match the past they were used to. A big old house fallen into disrepair, noises, mysterious patches on the wall, writing on the windowsill and the death of a loved one that marked Mrs. Ayres forever. All this and more is discovered by a local doctor who befriends the family and who gets to see them to their tragic end. The love story added a nice touch to the otherwise gloomy atmosphere of the novel, but I wish the book had a different ending. I’m not saying I wanted a happily-ever-after but it would have been nice if the author had given away a little bit more. Nevertheless, I look forward to reading more of her novels in the near future.

Eleven Minutes, by Paulo Coelho, is the story of Maria, a girl from a Brazilian village who goes to the big city with big hopes and ends up as a prostitute. A few years later, tired and disappointed of her life, she decides to go back to her village but meets a young artist who makes her change her mind. Can love still be possible?
Apparently, it can. Coelho weaves his magic and tries to make us believe in it. I thought the explanations for those eleven minutes quite unexpected if a bit strange and I thought the ending was too Hollywood-like for my taste but then I guess the alternative would have been too depressing.
There’s a certain something that attracts me to Coelho’s books. Maybe it’s the lessons he’s trying to get across to his readers, or perhaps a somehow soulful quality to his stories that makes me shake my head in doubt and also hope. I still like The Alchemist the best, though.

Three Cups of Tea, by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin

“You have to read this book”, a friend of mine said and while I tend to take this kind of suggestion with a dose of skepticism, I didn’t say no. I was too curious.
Greg Mortenson was a climber and this is his real story. While attempting to reach K2, one of the most difficult mountains to climb, he got lost and ended up in a village in Pakistan. In return for the villagers’ kindness, he promised to come back and build them a school. He built not one, but many more, scattered in a region fraught with danger. Not even the difficult conditions (that chai drink recipe sounded foul) nor the threats made him change his mind and in the course of a decade he managed to go back and forth between America and Pakistan, building an organization that helped bring education in some very harsh places.
The story was wonderful and I was moved, the writing however had me roll my eyes a few times and wishing someone had taken the time to “polish” the book a little bit. Calling Mortenson “a hero” so many times that I lost count may have been accurate but I’d rather make up my mind about that than having these two words brandished at me every few pages as if the authors were afraid I was forgetting them.

Waiter Rant, by Steve Dublanica

Funny, outrageous, straightforward and overall entertaining, this book describes one writer’s experience of waiting tables in today’s America. From the stress of coping with verbally abusive bosses, to the intricate art of dealing with the customers (yes, I do think it’s an art to be able to deal with so many different people without losing your mind), this book tells it all. I went from laughing at the apparent witticism – laced with a bit of arrogance here and there – to being appalled at some of the stories – running in the street and yelling after the customers because they didn’t leave a tip seemed a bit extreme. If I ever make it to America, I hope I’ll remember that 15 is a magic number.

Clandestine, by James Ellroy

I got this book from the monthly book-crossing meeting here in Bangkok. My friend Anna recommended it and even though I’m not very keen on detective novels I decided to give it a try. She was the one who recommended The Restaurant at the End of the Universe after all, and I had so much fun reading that book!
The story takes place in the ’50, and the main protagonist is Frederick Underhill, a policeman in the city of Los Angeles. His days are spent on the job and his nights chasing women. He has a passion for golf, a bit of an attitude and an inquisitive mind. When one of the women he spent a night with ends up dead, he’s determined to find her killer but answers will come with a high price: his career ends, his marriage breaks up and the case remains unsolved for years. That is, until new evidence comes up and Underhill realizes that the only way to bring closure is going to be off the record.
This book was better than I expected. It hasn’t turned me into a fan of detective novels but it was a nice change from what I usually read. The writing is flamboyant, the characters flawed and likeable and the story well told. I had no idea this writer was the author of The Black Dahlia – I haven’t read the book but I’ve seen the movie and liked it. Also, there’s a picture of the author and his dog (?) on the inside of the back cover which I thought was funny. The dog I mean, not the author.

The Art of Conversation, by Catherine Blyth

I was intrigued by this book. After seeing it a couple of times at the bookstore, I decided to give it a try.
This is a how-to book. It gives examples of real-life conversational situations, possible answers and ways to improve/counteract verbal interactions. It’s also rather dry and academically formulated. On the plus side, it made me want to pay more attention to face to face conversation, where the gestures and mimic are just as important as the words. What people say can be intriguing, just like the things they leave out of conversation or the way they try to steer clear of some subjects.

***

Coming up: the best books I’ve read in 2011!

Ghosts, objects with unnatural power, demons taking the place of innocent, vengeful houses, bones, doors, people possessed, all that and more can be found in this collection of supernatural tales. Comprised of twenty-five stories, this is a book I thoroughly enjoyed and while it wasn’t as horrific as I expected (not complaining, just saying) it still gave me a nightmare from which I woke, eyes wide awake, trying to remember if that black shape near the mirror was there before I went to sleep. It was.

I enjoyed reading all the stories, and I thought the introduction before each one was a nice touch. It was interesting to see how an idea based in real life evolved into a good scary story. While I can’t say I didn’t like any of the stories, a handful of them I consider a step above the others. Here they are:

The Poison Pen, by Christopher Fowler, is a tale of the occult, greed and an object with a lot of power. When a rich relative dies, his fortune is divided among his family but the favorite nephew gets nothing. This is strange, considering that at their last get-together, the wealthy uncle had promised Mark ‘something very special’. And then tragedy strikes and Mark finally realizes why he was omitted from the will. This was my favorite story.

The Door, by R. Chetwynd-Hayes
A writer with a passion for collecting old things buys a door that belonged to an old house. A massive door made of ‘solid walnut’ with ‘an intricate pattern that seemed to grow more complicated the longer it was examined’. Little does he know this is no ordinary door but something far more sinister that needs to be fed in order to maintain its power.

Grandfather’s Teeth, by Lisa Tuttle
When people die, the loved ones left behind are tempted to keep something that belonged to them, something to remember them by. For his nephew, Dougie, that keepsake was his grandfather’s fake teeth. Possessed by a fascination he could not explain, the boy keeps them in his room but they prove to be more than a harmless piece of ‘ivory-colored teeth arrayed in the pink plastic gums’. I actually cringed when I got to the end of the story.

Grandmother’s Slippers, by Sarah Pinborough, starts with the mention of a funeral and continues with the story of a pair of slippers with a purpose. What that purpose is and how they manage to achieve it, makes for an interesting story.

City of Dreams, by Richard Christian Matheson, is a story made of delicate threads; references to movies, writing, famous people, brings a sophisticated air to the narrative. It is also a story about curiosity satisfied but with a price that brings about many more questions.

A House on Fire, by Tanith Lee
Not only people have souls, but houses, too; this seems to be the main idea behind this story in which a house haunts the one who burned it down. This is no ordinary pile of wood and stone and glass, and its revenge is terrible.

The Hidden Chamber, by Neil Gaiman, it’s a beautiful poem that starts like this:
‘Do not fear the ghosts in this house; they are the least of your worries.’
I love the last part of this poem. It brings to the page a feeling of loneliness and longing, and sadness.

*Read in December, 2011

Ah, Orwell, I fell in love with your writing ever since I read 1984. I loved your clean, uncomplicated prose, the despair and sadness of your characters, the uncluttered narrative of your books. That is why I regret not buying “Why I Write”, a book of yours I picked up and then let go. But I will read it one day, I promise.
Despite of my admiration for your work – I loved Burmese Days and 1984, of course – I found A Clergyman’s Daughter a rather dull book in the beginning. Life as the unmarried daughter of a country priest, between the Christian duties of visiting the neighbors to provide help and also coax them back to church, and the demanding requests of a selfish father, did not hold a lot of excitement. I did admire Dorothy for bearing it all so well, for managing to split herself between her duties and trying to please everybody. There were costumes to be made for a children’s play to raise some funds for one thing or another, endless housework, the garden to be weeded and catering to the comfort of her father, the priest, a strict, gloomy and demanding man who lived in the past with no idea of the struggles of the daily life. I just wanted to shake slap the man.

Halfway through the book things took a turn for the worse and as cruel as that may sound, put a bit of life into the book. Dorothy was thrown into the harsh city life of London. With the country still battling the Depression, the fight for survival was cruel, brutal and shocking and Dorothy got to experience it all. Suffering from memory loss and with no money in her pocket, she tags along with three people who are trying to find work as day laborers on a farm. Dorothy falls right in with the exhausting life on the farm – it seems that as long as she has a routine to hold on to she goes along as if in a dream, never once questioning her past or the fact that she doesn’t remember her name. A tragic incident startles her out of the stupor and memories come back in a rush. Trying to get back home she writes to her father to send her some money and clothes but her letters remain unanswered. Forced to leave the farm, she wanders the streets, living with the homeless, being thrown into jail and suffering from cold and hunger until a cousin takes pity and helps her find a job as a teacher. I thoroughly enjoyed reading about Dorothy’s experience as a teacher, her enthusiasm as she tried to devise new ways to teach the children, her struggles to keep both her employer (what a cold-hearted woman!) and the parents happy (more handwriting and arithmetic if you please!) and in the end giving up. It was probably the most dreadful part of the whole book because there is nothing more horrible than watching the hope for a new life being killed, slowly, methodically, utterly driven into the ground.

“But the children wouldn’t have understood the play if I hadn’t explained!” protested Dorothy for the third or fourth time.
“Of course they wouldn’t! You don’t seem to get my point, Miss Millborough! We don’t want them to understand. Do you think we want them to go picking up dirty ideas out of books? Quite enough of that already with all these dirty films and these twopenny girls’ papers that they get hold of – all these filthy, dirty love-stories with pictures of – well, I won’t go into it. We don’t send our children to school to have ideas put into their heads.”
“That’s it! Practical work – that’s what we want – practical work! Not all this messy stuff like po’try and making maps and sticking scraps on paper and such like. Give ‘em a good bit of figuring and handwriting and bother the rest. Practical work! You’ve said it!”

In the end, Dorothy’s prayers are answered. Ironically, it is the man who got her into trouble that saves her, and she goes back to her boring, repetitive, colorless life.

This was Orwell’s third book, published in 1935, after Down and Out in Paris and London (1933) and Burmese Days (1934). It can be divided into 2 parts: life before and after. Before she lost her memory and after she regained it. There was the tedious but familiar environment of her village with her days filled with endless things to do, and the new, bleak, harsh life of the big city, independence but also misery, loneliness and despair. The book raises some interesting questions regarding religion, the purpose of one’s life, and the benefits of a life comprised of routine, endless work to keep the hands busy and the mind from wandering and asking too many questions.
This is my favorite kind of book, one that focuses on a central character, their feelings, their journey through life. Beautiful in its simplicity, with few characters, it allowed me to understand and connect with Dorothy in a way that few books do. It’s a sad story with a bitter-sweet end and even if it’s not my favorite Orwell novel it helped make me like his writing even more.

A few paragraphs I enjoyed:

About the Rector (Dorothy’s father):

The service was beginning. The Rector, in cassock and short linen surplice, was reciting the prayers in a swift practiced voice, clear enough now that his teeth were in, and curiously ungenial. In his fastidious, aged face, pale as a silver coin, there was an expression of aloofness, almost of contempt. ‘This is a valid sacrament, he seemed to be saying, ‘and it is my duty to administer it to you. But remember that I am only your priest, not your friend. As a human being I dislike you and despise you.’

About Dorothy:

“Dorothy drew a long glass-headed pin from the lapel of her coat, and furtively, under cover of Miss Mayfill’s back, pressed the point against her forearm. Her flesh tingled apprehensively. She made it a rule, whenever she caught herself not attending to her prayers, to prick her arm hard enough to make blood come. It was her chosen form of self-discipline, her guard against irreverence and sacrilegious thoughts.
With the pin poised in readiness she managed for several minutes to pray more collectedly. Her father had turned one dark eye disapprovingly upon Miss Mayfill, who was crossing herself at intervals, a practice he disliked. A starling chattered outside. With a shock, Dorothy discovered that she was looking vaingloriously at the pleats of her father’s surplice, which she herself had sewn two years ago. She set her teeth and drove the pin an eighth of an inch into her arm.”

During a google search I discovered a site with the texts of Orwell’s books and essays. It’s nice to know that “Why I Write” is just a click away.

*Read in December 2011