Monday 28 October 2024

Rulfo, Juan "Pedro Páramo"

Rulfo, Juan "Pedro Páramo" (Spanish: Pedro Páramo) - 1955

This was our international online book club book for October 2024.

I really like South American and Central American authors, they are always interesting, they are different from our European or the North American ones,.

Juan Rulfo is not that different from the other authors of that genre. Gabriel García Márquez and Jorge Luis Borges had nothing but praise for him.

The book was interesting though quite confusing at times. You think you are at the beginning of November celebrating Dia de los Muertos (All Souls Day) because we accompany a young man into a village where his parents grew up but it is a ghost town.

It is an unusual kind of writing, so the story is hard to follow, you don't know whether you are in this world or the next, whether someone is dead or alive. The narrative is non-linear, so it jumps around all the time. But the novel is definitely worth reading.

Some comments from members at the meeting:

  • The book was strongly magical realism, we did not get a good grasp of the plot, but found it poetic.
  • It was quite eerily ghostly, at first it not being clear where the story is going, who is alive and who is dead and what is going on. Then the horrors started creeping up on what was going on in the town becoming just worse and worse. The lawlessness, the enabling of violence and murder and rich and powerful dominating the poorer people and women. It was a really interesting book to read, but not one I would pick up to read again.
  • As we had read 2 other Latin-American authors, Jorge Luis Borges and Gabriel García Márquez , who had been said to have been deeply influenced by Rulfo, I could definitely see the connection, but found Rulfo to be more subtle in his approach to describing evil. At moments the writing was beautifully poetic giving a lot of feeling and nuance to the story.

Book Description:

"The highly influential masterpiece of Latin American literature, now published in a new, authoritative translation, and featuring a foreword by Gabriel García Márquez

A masterpiece of the surreal that influenced a generation of writers in Latin America,
Pedro Páramo is the otherworldly tale of one man’s quest for his lost father. That man swears to his dying mother that he will find the father he has never met - Pedro Páramo - but when he reaches the town of Comala, he finds it haunted by memories and hallucinations. There emerges the tragic tale of Páramo himself, and the town whose every corner holds the taint of his rotten soul. Although initially published to a quiet reception, Pedro Páramo was soon recognized as a major novel that has served as a touchstone text for writers including Mario Vargas Llosa and José Donoso.

Now published in a new translation from the definitive Spanish edition by celebrated Rulfo scholar Douglas J. Weatherford, and featuring a foreword by Gabriel García Márquez, this new edition of the novel cements its place as one of the seminal literary texts of the twentieth century."

Thursday 24 October 2024

#ThrowbackThursday. November 2011 Part 2

I've been doing Throwback Thursdays for a while but I noticed that I wrote a lot of reviews in a short time when I first started. One of my blogger friends always posts the reviews of one month but that would be too much. So, these are my reviews from the second part of November 2011.

Haushofer, Marlen "The Wall" (GE: Die Wand) - 1962
This is a book I will never forget. It is about a woman who wakes up one morning only to find out there is an invisible wall around the house in the mountains where she has spent the night. 

Ondaatje, Michael "Anil's Ghost" - 2000
Civil war in Sri Lanka, human rights issues, a story of ordinary people, love, family, a lot of history in this country. 
I love books about history and/or novels from other parts of this world. Anil's Ghost combines history and a story from another part of this world. The language in this book is wonderful, I could read on like this for ages. 

Rosner, Elisabeth "The Speed of Light" - 2001
This is one of those stories that stay with you forever. All three characters are struggling with either their own or their parents' past, with a story they could not change, they were completely innocent in. 

Schmitt, Éric-Emmanuel "Oscar and the Lady in Pink" (F: Oscar et la dame rose) - 2002
The author introduces his readers to a religion through the eyes of a child. This time, he talks about Christianity.

Soueif, Ahdaf "Aisha" - 1983
A short story collection that positively surprised me. The author manages to describe the people so vividly and the stories are so interesting, she is just a great writer. However, this isn't really a collection of short stories but the description of Aisha's life and that of people in her life who turn up in the short stories. A journey between East and West, bringing Orient and Occident together. 

Read my original reviews, for the links click on the titles.

Tuesday 22 October 2024

Top 5 Tuesday ~ Orange

Top Five Tuesday was originally created by Shanah @ Bionic Book Worm, but is now hosted by Meeghan @ Meeghan Reads. To participate, link your post back to Meeghan’s blog or leave a comment on her weekly post. I found this on Davida's Page @ The Chocolate Lady.

* * *
This week’s topic is Orange. Meeghan says: "Earlier this year we did yellow books and red books, but it’s now time for Halloween. What are your favourite orange covered books?"

Orange is not my colour but I found 27 books that were 99% orange, can you believe it?
Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi "We Should All Be Feminists" - 2006

Emcke, Carolin "Against Hate" (GE: Gegen den Hass) - 2016

Hanks, Tom "Uncommon Type. Some Stories" - 2017 (short stories)


Sendker, Jan-Philipp "A Well-Tempered Heart(Burma Trilogy # 2) (GE: Herzenstimmen) - 2012

All of those are great books. And even some of the covers are in German, they are all available in English.

* * *
🏆 Happy Reading! 🏆
📚 📚 📚

Monday 21 October 2024

Morrison, Toni "The Bluest Eye"

Morrison, Toni "The Bluest Eye" - 1970

I read this for the "1970s Club".

As always, Toni Morrison has written a fantastic story about the troubles of people who suffer from racism. This is not my favourite book by her (that would be "Beloved") but it is still a great story. We follow the family Breedlove and their friends backwards, to see what they have all been through.

The main character is the little girl that would love blue eyes. While I understand that wish, she wants to be accepted and thinks this is the way to get there, I thought the rest of the story was much more important.

From the back cover:

"Pecola Breedlove, a young black girl, prays every day for beauty. Mocked by other children for the dark skin, curly hair, and brown eyes that set her apart, she yearns
for normalcy, for the blond hair and blue eyes that she believes will allow her to finally fit in. Yet as her dream grows more fervent, her life slowly starts to disintegrate in the face of adversity and strife.
"

Toni Morrison "who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American realityreceived the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993.

I contribute to this page: Read the Nobels and you can find all my blogs about Nobel Prize winning authors and their books here.

Read more about other books by the author here.

Thursday 17 October 2024

#ThrowbackThursday. November 2011 Part 1

I've been doing Throwback Thursdays for a while but I noticed that I wrote a lot of reviews in a short time when I first started. One of my blogger friends always posts the reviews of one month but that would be too much. So, these are my reviews from the first part of November 2011.

Adams, Richard "Watership Down" - 1972
This sad story as a sign how careless we are with Mother Nature, how easily we destroy our home planet, how little we consider our fellow human and animal beings.

Dirie, Waris "Desert Flower: The Extraordinary Journey of a Desert Nomad" - 1998
I remember hearing about female genital mutilation but I think this was the first time I read about it in detail. I think I was so shocked, couldn't believe that anyone would do such a thing ton an innocent young girl, the book has never left me. Not what you expect from the autobiography of a famous model.

Forster, E. M. (Edward Morgan) "A Passage to India" - 1924
This novel takes us both to a different time and a different area, India in die 1920s. Of course, the protagonists are British who live in the time of the Indian independence movement but the main character is a young Indian who gets into trouble just through the carelessness of the English. The book talks about friendship, colonialism, the wish of all human beings to be independent.

Hamilton, Jane "A Map of the World" - 1994
"Happiness is an Illusion, Pain is Reality" - Alice Goodwin, the main character of this novel, receives this as her fortune cookie when visiting a Chinese restaurant with her husband. She doesn't think this sounds like a reality but is reminded of it shortly afterwards when her life changes so much, nothing will ever be the same again.

Smith, Zadie "On Beauty" - 2005
Again, I quite like the author's style, the way she portrays the different characters. Apparently, an homage to E. M. Forster's "Howards End". The fact that she manages to make this into a very modern story shows how timeless a writer she is.

Smith, Zadie "White Teeth" - 1999
A great book with interesting plots, good descriptions, good language.
Zadie Smith's first book takes place in Zadie Smith's a Jamaican hair salon in North London, an Indian restaurant in Leicester Square, an Irish poolroom turned immigrant café, a liberal public school, a sleek science institute.

Read my original reviews, for the links click on the titles.

Tuesday 15 October 2024

Follett, Ken "The Armour of Light"

Follett, Ken "The Armour of Light" - 2023

"The grand master of gripping fiction is back. International No.1 bestseller Ken Follett returns to Kingsbridge with an epic tale of revolution and a cast of unforgettable characters."

Yes, he is a grand master indeed. After having written four books about Kingsbridge, their cathedral and the inhabitants, rich and poor from 997 until the 16th century, here is the follow-up for the Industrial Revolution.

With the story of  Kingsbridge, we also learn the story of England and the United Kingdom. Anytime we read about history and how people lived, we must be thankful to live today. Even though we also have political problems, we as "the little people" have a lot more rights than people ever had. And we owe this to people like those described here.

I hope the story of Kingsbridge will continue into modern times. Then we could just go on with the century trilogy.

In any case, this is THE series for lovers of historical fiction.

I missed a list of all the characters before and during the book. And, like I said before, I would have enjoyed a timeline of what happened at the time. Yes, I have the internet and plenty of other books where I can look this up but I find having it in the actual book I'm reading is actually very helpful.

From the back cover:

"Revolution is in the air

1792. A tyrannical government is determined to make England a mighty commercial empire. In France, Napoleon Bonaparte begins his rise to power, and with dissent rife, France’s neighbours are on high alert.

Kingsbridge is on the edge

Unprecedented industrial change sweeps the land, making the lives of the workers in Kingbridge’s prosperous cloth mills a misery. Rampant modernization and dangerous new machinery are rendering jobs obsolete and tearing families apart.

Tyranny is on the horizon

Now, as international conflict nears, a story of a small group of Kingsbridge people - including spinner Sal Clitheroe, weaver David Shoveller and Kit, Sal’s inventive and headstrong son - will come to define the struggle of a generation as they seek enlightenment and fight for a future free from oppression. . .

Taking the reader straight into the heart of history with the fifth novel in the ground-breaking Kingsbridge series, The Armour of Light is master storyteller Ken Follett’s most ambitious novel to date."

Monday 14 October 2024

The Classics Club: The Classics Spin #39

 

"Words and Peace" is a blog I've been following for a couple of years and I have always found some interesting new (or olde) books there, especially French ones.

On her page, I found the posts by "The Classics Club" asking us to create a post, this time before next Sunday 20th October 2024, and list our choice of any twenty books that remain "to be read" on our Classics Club list. They'll then post a number from 1 through 20 and we have time until Sunday 18th of December 2024 to read it.

This time, I read only the one book from my old list (Classics Spin #38) ("Cannery Row"). But there are always some new books that I can add to my challenge. The books are all in chronological order.

  1. Aristophanes "Lysistrata and Other Plays" (Lysistrata) - 411BC
  2. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von "Urfaust. Faust Fragment. Faust I" (Faust) - 1772-1808
  3. Dickens, Charles "Nicholas Nickleby. The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby" - 1838/39
  4. Dumas, Alexandre fils "Camille: The Lady of the Camellias" (La Dame aux Camélias" - 1848
  5. Flaubert, Gustave "Madame Bovary" (Madame Bovary/ Madame Bovary) - 1857
  6. Turgenjew, Iwan Sergejewitsch "Fathers and Sons" (Отцы и дети/Otzy i deti) - 1862
  7. Conrad, Joseph "Victory: An Island Tale" - 1915
  8. Hamilton, Cicely "William - an Englishman" - 1920
  9. Hesse, Hermann "Wir nehmen die Welt nur zu ernst" [We just take the world too seriously] - 1928
  10. Faulkner, William "The Sound and the Fury" - 1929
  11. Hemingway, Ernest "A Farewell to Arms" - 1929
  12. Meigs, Cornelia "Invincible Louisa" - 1933
  13. Krleža, Miroslav "On the Edge of Reason" (Na rubu pameti) - 1938
  14. Némirovsky, Irène "Les biens de ce monde" (All Our Wordly Goods) - 1941
  15. Cela, Camilo José "The Family of Pascal Duarte" (La Familia Duarte) - 1942
  16. Zweig, Stefan "Schachnovelle" (The Royal Game/Chess) - 1942
  17. Wilde, Oscar "Only Dull People Are Brilliant at Breakfast" - 1946
  18. Huxley, Aldous "Ape and Essence" - 1948
  19. Hemingway, Ernest "Across the River and into the Trees" - 1950
  20. Simenon, Georges "Maigret's Memoirs" (Les mémoires de Maigret) - 1951

#3 was picked this time, so for me it's:
Dickens, Charles "Nicholas Nickleby. The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby" - 1838/39

This is a great idea for all of us who want to read more classics. Go ahead, get your own list. I can't wait to see what I get to read this time.

Here are all the books on my original Classics Club list.
And here is a list of all the books I read with the Classics Spin.