One thing I am so sick and tiring of reading is the violence in Blood Meridian. True this is a book with a high body count but I see it as McCarthy’s way of telling us that the desert is a brutal place with no morals and full of savagery. It’s not  violence for the sake of it.

The book starts off with the main character (called the kid) running away from his house and travelling to Mexico. On the way he gets arrested and his only way of escape is to join a gang of scalp hunters, led by  The Judge.

The Judge has got to be one of the most fearsome literary characters ever invented. A man with his own code of morality , he kills and destroys life and yet he records the things he’s never seen in a notebook, and he adopts a mentally defective child on his journey with the scalp hunters.

Like All the Pretty Horses , McCarthy’s desert is full of nasty surprises and a certain ugliness assaults one wherever you go. Whether it is an army of blood thirsty Indians or a bear, danger is everywhere and the troop of  scalp hunters will stop at no cost to get their precious pound of hair filled flesh, even killing their own team in the process.

Yes this is a big ugly book , but McCarthy’s poetic descriptions just elevate it to another plateau. There’s even a cinematic quality to the writing, however unless it’s Alejandro Jodrowsky, I can’t really imagine anyone else trying to adapt Blood Meridian.

Funnily enough whenever I browse through the 1001 book I always land on the page where Contact is featured. Sagan has also featured in another way in my life as I had a lecturer who was obsessed with his works and carried a hardbound copy of Cosmos with her a couple of times during lectures.

So now our destinies meet!

Ellie Arroway is a scientist who specialises in extraterrestrial contact and one day she receives a signal confirming alien life. After lots of research and ethical discussions she discovers that the code the aliens were sending are actually the co-ordinates of a machine to visit the alien life. After even more discussions a team of scientists manage to build the machine and visit the star (Vega) on which the signals were emitted from.  When they do arrive they are in for a surprise.

Honestly I felt that Contact started well but had an ending which was a bit silly. In fact I felt ripped off plus the constant nerdy scientific detail was exhausting but other than that Sagan does write some very interesting points about the ethics of alien communication and there are some plot twists which come at the right moment – although I did predict some things as well. On the whole I felt that Contact was a good book but not as great as I imagined it.

A new year and a new book review! Unfortunately it’s not a very positive one.

I had very high hopes for Simon and the Oaks. I mean a coming of age story set in Sweden during the holocaust and then developing Europe. In theory this should make me salivate but it just didn’t.

Simon is Jewish and lives with his Swedish aunt and uncle (there is a reason for this but i’d be giving away half the book) and during his free time he spends hours amongst the oak trees , where he confides his secrets. Later on in the novel Simon is joined by a Jewish refugee, Isaak and the two grow up together and experience the trials of life.

On a positive note these characters are developed very well and Fredriksson does talk about teen angst, falling love and facing the world as an adult extremely well, but my gripe is that this book does not flow, rather it feels like a bunch of stories that were chucked inbetween two covers accidentally. At times I did get restless and when I did finish the book, I  ultimately felt that I wanted more.

Incidentally this book is out of print so I advise a bit of caution if you want to check it out.

I have a love/hate relationship with John Irving. I love his novels but they take me ages to finish. Mind you it is worth it as an Irving novel needs time to unravel and due to the complex (but never off-putting) plots you need utmost concentration.

Homer Wells is an unwanted orphan who is then ‘adopted’ by the orphanage’s founder, Dr. Wilbur Larch. The thing is that it also doubles as an abortion clinic, which at the time the book takes place, is illegal.

Dr. Larch wants Homer to take up his profession as an abortionist but this is against Homer’s principles and he runs off with a couple, only to find himself entangled in a complicated love triangle. As with all of Irving’s books time plays an important factor and a series of events change and shift the relationships has with all the characters in the novel.

The CIder House Rules is a masterpiece that encompasses teachings on morality , politics and racism. However I will admit that I preferred A Prayer for Owen Meany, mainly because I felt that Cider House… had some meanderings and untied loose ends which contributed nothing to the plot and I have to admit that the ending is a bit rushed and some details could have been expanded but nevertheless this is one almighty novel that doubles up as a great story as well as a morality tale.

I actually had finished this book about two weeks ago but my work pressures have been increasing so it’s a little bit difficult to find some time to write about books (although luckily I have enough time to read – my hour in the early morning is doing wonders)

Anyway , I love coming of age stories and Annie John is just that ; A girl growing up in Jamaica. There are the usual things that happen , such as Annie’s clashes with her mother, her perception of Jamaica, the discrimination she encounters while trying to further her studying and eventually her development into womanhood and her escape to better pastures.

It’s a thin book and Kincaid doesn’t waste any time in getting straight into the plot and it is well written but I couldn’t help  noticing that I’ve read stuff like this before so although I liked the novel I wasn’t really gaga over it. In all it was a pleasant  one sit read for a rainy morning.

After spending a month on Garcia Marquez, It’s funny that I finished The Parable of the Blind in 90 minutes. I guess reading speed always depends on the writing style.

Anyways the novel is about the journey six blind men take to Bruegel house in order to be painted. On the way they encounter some pitfalls and traps and even when they are being painted there are some accidents. By the way this painting actually does exist so Hofmann is creating a sort of ‘what if ‘ situation.

Really the book is about about navigating through your world when you have a sense lacking and the author manages to be both serious and humorous at the same time. It’s a very zippy and charming novel so despite the fact that it’s out of print, do check it out as it’s worth your time and money.

Sometimes I tend to find Garcia Marquez’s prose a bit too flowery for my liking. Yes there are moments of beauty but now and then it can be a bit off-putting. However I must make an exception for Love in the Time of Cholera because it is a rare breed of love story, that is there’s tons of romance but it’s never overly sentimental.

The novel focuses on a complicated love triangle between Florentino Ariza , Fermina Daza and Juvenal Urbino. The thing is that this triangle spans over 50 years so the reader gets to know the personal histories of each character. Eventually Urbino dies (it’s not a spoiler) so Ariza tries his hardest to woo Daza’s heart for good.  The question is if he manages to succeed.

Love …. is a beautifully written novel. There are lots of flourishes and linguistic somersaults, not to mention the depth of the characters. Out of all the Garcia Marquez books I have read, this one was the most satisfying and bereft of his use of magical realism. If you want to start with Garcia Marquez then do begin with this.

I am quite amazed at the length of time it took me to read this novel. The thing is I’ve got a lot of  work at the mo so I can only squeeze in some reading early in the morning.  I thought I’d finish the 80′s section by Christmas but I think I’ll be finished with it by summer 2012.

We’ll see!

There’s nothing worse than a reading slump and when you commit yourself to a project like this they inevitably happen. It is impossible to like something that you don’t feel like reading  and from Matigari onwards (with the exception of Watchmen) this  was happening.  Unfortunately I’ve experienced this slump with every decade I’ve tackled and I’m waiting for at least one decade where I love every single book.

However once you get out of the slump it’s a great feeling. There was some light shining with The Beautiful Mrs. Seidenman but now with Ancestral Voices I think the only way is upwards.

The is a family saga, much in the same line as both Garcia Marquez and Steinbeck.  This means that there are elements of magic realism mixed with moments of stark realism. Oh yes there’s a character who shares my surname (Pisani) and considering that the book takes place in South Africa, I was greatly surprised to see this!

As I said the setting takes place in South Africa , on a farmland which has been owned by the Moolmans for a century. During these hundred years there have been killings, rebellions and ex communicated family members.  The tragedy begins when one of the grandchildren falls down a boorhole and then shot in the process and a magistrate has to visit this family in order to see who is the culprit.

Due to the largeness of the Moolman’s this magistrate has to inspect the whole family tree and comes across some nasty surprises.

Murder mystery aside (we do find out who the killer is) van Heerdeen is presenting a South Africa where Apartheid is rife and mentalities are still to be adhered to, in fact the banished members of the family are the ones who went against convention and mingled with Africans.  One character in the novel who fights for rights  is seen as the biggest traitor of the Moolmans. So this is quite political, although it’s quite disguised in the beginning.

My only gripe about this book is that it is out of print, surely a novel of this magnitude should be widely available. Sometimes I don’t understand.

After already reading a book about the second World War, I wasn’t up to another one. Especially since this one focuses on Jews as well but The Beautiful Mrs. Seidenman is so great that I forgot all my complaints and got absorbed into the novel.

As such you could say that the book is a collection of short stories but they are loosely linked as the same characters re-occur. The woman of the title is a Jew who has, through illegal ways, becomes a Polish citizen. Her lover is a young man who tries to understand this crazy situation, his friend is a spoilt young man who tries to escape the ghetto and so.

Not only does Szczypiorski speak about the present and the past, he also mentions the future destinations of his characters obviously unbeknownst to them. It is this factor which made me read this book compulsively as most of the themes here , doubt, fear, bravery have been tackled before in other holocaust novels. Incidentally the translation is great and flowing and that helped my enjoyment of the book.

A cult classic!

I got to love the eclecticism the 1001 list presents. One day I’m reading a comic about superheroes and next I tackle Primo Levi’s essays on concentration camps.

As I have revealed, this is what The Drowned and the Saved is all about. It is also one of the very few non fiction titles of the list (these exceptions always come as a little surprise).

Within these short chapters Levi goes into a more psychological account of the ‘lagers’ and the various results. From the inner dialect that formed, to common stereotypes, the tricks that memory can play on you. and, the best chapter, German reactions to his earlier works . What keeps this work from being too academic is the fact that Levi only uses anecdotes as examples in order to get his point across , plus some references to films and novels written by other camp survivors.

All of this makes interesting reading, however to be honest I wasn’t really in the mood for something like this but anyways this is one of the things when you are ‘bound’ to a challenge like this. Sometimes you have to take certain books in your stride.

I’m curious about Levi’s other works now (and there are quite a few mentioned) so at least The Drowned and the Saved sparked off an interest.