Sartre, Jean-Paul "Nausea"

Sartre, Jean-Paul "Nausea" (French: La nausée) - 1938

We discussed this in our international online book club in April 2025.

An interesting book. Yes, it introduces us to existentialism. I gives us ideas for thoughts about our lives. But it's not really a novel, nothing much happens. At the beginning, I was quite bored. It picks up a little but it doesn't catch you.

I heard Sartre compared to Camus. I absolutely love Camus. Sartre doesn't come over as well, the story is not a real story. You don't know where they are going. There isn't a flow to his writing.

At the beginning, when the protagonist talks about his nausea, it  reminded me of depression, the big black dog, as people also call it. I thought it might go that way. But it didn't.

All in all, not an exciting book. I would have expected more. Maybe I read this too late.

Comments by other members:

"It was described very accurately by a funny Finnish word 'pitkäpiimäinen' = like rubbery sour milk, longwinded, boring.

We thought it was much more like a complete philosophy textbook than a story.

It was a very anxious story about a depressed and lonely person

It reminded us of many similar stories we have read over the years about loneliness and mental illness, for example: Steppenwolf, The Stranger, plus many more all with their own variety on the subject."

From the back cover:

"Jean-Paul Sartre's first published novel, Nausea is both an extended essay on existentialist ideals, and a profound fictional exploration of a man struggling to restore a sense of meaning to his life. This Penguin Modern Classics edition is translated from the French by Robert Baldick with an introduction by James Wood.

Nausea is both the story of the troubled life of an introspective historian, Antoine Roquentin, and an exposition of one of the most influential and significant philosophical attitudes of modern times - existentialism. The book chronicles his struggle with the realisation that he is an entirely free agent in a world devoid of meaning; a world in which he must find his own purpose and then take total responsibility for his choices. A seminal work of contemporary literary philosophy, Nausea evokes and examines the dizzying angst that can come from simply trying to live."

Jean-Paul Sartre received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1964 "for his work, which rich in ideas and filled with the spirit of freedom and the quest for truth, has exerted a far-reaching influence on our age". He was awarded the prize even though he refused it.

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

Keyes, Daniel "Flowers for Algernon"

Keyes, Daniel "Flowers for Algernon" - 1959

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

I wasn't really keen on reading this, you know how much I dislike science fiction. But this is a different one, yes, it's about science and it's about fictional science but it's got nothing to do with aliens or made-up planets, it wouldn't be an action movie with loud noises if the turned it into a film. Actually, they did turn it into one and it doesn't look like an action movie.

This is an interesting story about a young man who can hardly write his name let alone a decent sentence without any mistakes. They perform an operation on him and his IQ increases to astronomical heights. We see the change in Charlie. Phenomenal. As he understands more and more what they have done to him, the story reaches a different perspective.

Quite a good read.

From the back cover:

"Winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards, the powerful, classic story about a man who receives an operation that turns him into a genius...and introduces him to heartache.

Charlie Gordon is about to embark upon an unprecedented journey. Born with an unusually low IQ, he has been chosen as the perfect subject for an experimental surgery that researchers hope will increase his intelligence - a procedure that has already been highly successful when tested on a lab mouse named Algernon.

As the treatment takes effect, Charlie's intelligence expands until it surpasses that of the doctors who engineered his metamorphosis. The experiment appears to be a scientific breakthrough of paramount importance, until Algernon suddenly deteriorates. Will the same happen to Charlie?"

Daniel Keyes has received both the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award for this novel.

Harari, Yuval Noah "21 Lessons for the 21st Century"

Harari, Yuval Noah "21 Lessons for the 21st Century" - 2018

A brilliant follow-up to "Sapiens" and "Homo Deus". This is another book that I think everyone should read. The author shows us what the future might have in mind for us and how we should get prepared. And I don*t talk about the fear of war or natural disasters due to climate change but about everyday life. What should we study to get a decent job? More importantly, what should our children study in order to get through their lives? My parents and grandparents would leave school at age 14 or 15, do an apprenticeship and many of them worked in the same company for the rest of their lives. Once they finished their apprenticeship, they could do what they learn for decades without having to learn anything new. That is not the case anymore. That wasn't the case for my generation, that isn't the case for tomorrow's generation and it certainly will not be the case for the next generation after that.

So, we need clever people like Yuval Harari to tell us what might happen, what we can do in order not to be afraid of the future. He does exactly that. His recommendations make sense and are well-founded, he explains every single remark he makes. What's even better, he explains it in such a way that even people who don't understand much about science (like myself) can follow his explanations. And also about politics, global economy, anything that concerns us and influences our lives.

I heartily recommend this and his other books. They are just fantastic. I hope he will write more.

From the back cover:

"Sapiens showed us where we came from. Homo Deus looked to the future. 21 Lessons for the 21st Century explores the present.

How can we protect ourselves from nuclear war, ecological cataclysms and technological disruptions? What can we do about the epidemic of fake news or the threat of terrorism? What should we teach our children?

Yuval Noah Harari takes us on a thrilling journey through today’s most urgent issues. The golden thread running through his exhilarating new book is the challenge of maintaining our collective and individual focus in the face of constant and disorienting change. Are we still capable of understanding the world we have created?"

Sapolsky, Robert M. "Behave"

Sapolsky, Robert M. "Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst" - 2017

This was probably the toughest book I ever read even compared to "Ulysses" or "The Odyssey" and some other heavy and long classics). I guess anyone who read this and can repeat all of that deserves at least a master's degree.

I was never good at any science subject in school. Mainly because I wasn't interested in it. My teachers did not succeed in getting me enthusiastic about the subjects. If I had had a teacher like Robert Sapolsky, that might have been a different matter.

It still doesn't mean that I'd ever become an expert. There was far too much to-ing and fro-ing to my liking. That was just above my head.

The author says it himself in one of his last chapters:
"If you had to boil this book down to a single phrase, it would be 'It's complicated.' Indeed it is. But it is a complicated subject and I'm glad I read the book."

And one final quote:
"The opposite of hate is not love, its opposite is indifference." Elie Wiesel whose book "Night" is a publication everyone should read.

This was our international online "extra" book club read in May 2021.

Some comments:

• The book is massive and we agreed, that it lacks structure. Or at least, none of us found a helpful structure.
• Indeed, this was a tough read. The author could have taken more care about structure. I took 14 pages of hand written notes and I think, I needed them.
• Sapolsky organizes a huge amount of technical neuroscience into a logical and memorable structure, so that the context and significance of all that info is clear. He emphasizes the interplay of various factors. Then he discusses the personal, social, political and legal consequences of that information, forming a coherent view of humanity. Brilliant! 717 pages
• The chapter outline indicates the structure of the book and that helped me to maintain my orientation while reading.
  
• We plan to set up another meeting and discuss parts of the book to make up for the missing structure. If we discuss the whole book in just one hour with several people it may get a bit chaotic.
• We might then post questions for maybe one chapter at a time.

From the back cover:

"Why do human beings behave as they do?

We are capable of savage acts of violence but also spectacular feats of kindness: is one side of our nature destined to win out over the other?

Every act of human behaviour has multiple layers of causation, spiralling back seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, years, even centuries, right back to the dawn of time and the origins of our species.

In the epic sweep of history, how does our biology affect the arc of war and peace, justice and persecution? How have our brains evolved alongside our cultures?

This is the exhilarating story of human morality and the science underpinning the biggest question of all: what makes us human?"

For those of you who think, this might be a little too heavy but are still interested in "science for beginners", start with one of these:

Bryson, Bill "A Short History of Nearly Everything" - 2003
- "The Body. A Guide for Occupants" - 2019

Harari, Yuval Noah "Sapiens. A Brief History of Mankind" (Hebrew: קיצור תולדות האנושות/Ḳizur Toldot Ha-Enoshut) - 2014
- Noah "Homo Deus. A Brief History of Tomorrow"- 2016

Hustvedt, Siri "The Summer without Men"

Hustvedt, Siri "The Summer without Men" - 2011

I don't know when and why I bought this book; I just know that I had a list with books with "summer in the title" and this one came up. Since I hadn't read it, and summer was on the doorstep, I decided this needed to be one of my next reads.

It didn't exactly bring any to storms of enthusiasm from my side. I wouldn't exactly call it a difficult read, just a jumbled up one. At times, she reminded me of Sylvia Plath or Virginia Wolf, and not in a good way. It was philosophical but you often couldn't follow her train of thoughts, she drifted off.

The story is easy enough, Mia is left by her husband, at least for the time-being, and she falls into a deep hole, has to go to a mental hospital for a while and then goes to see her mother for the summer. All her mother's friends seem to have problems, as well. She teaches young girls in literature in a summer course, there are problems, too, of course. Oh, oh, and then there's the neighbour who has problems with her husband. Is there any problem a woman could have that doesn't get dragged into this book? The biggest trouble is, I couldn't really feel it, the characters were not real. It just seemed like one problem written down after another without given it too much depth.

And then there was too much poetry in this novel for my liking.

I know Siri Hustvedt is a renowned author. Maybe this is one of her weaker novels. Or - she's just not my thing. I still have "The Sorrows of an American" on my TBR pile, don't know whether I'll tackle that any time soon.

I did like the cover of the book, though.

From the back cover:

"Out of the blue, your husband of thirty years asks you for a pause in your marriage to indulge his infatuation with a young Frenchwoman. Do you: a) assume it's a passing affair and play along b) angrily declare the marriage over c) crack up d) retreat to a safe haven and regroup? Mia Fredricksen cracks up first, then decamps for the summer to the prairie town of her childhood, where she rages, fumes, and bemoans her sorry fate as abandoned spouse. But little by little, she is drawn into the lives of those around her: her mother and her circle of feisty widows; her young neighbour, with two small children and a loud, angry husband; and the diabolical pubescent girls in her poetry class. By the end of the summer without men, wiser though definitely not sadder, Mia knows what she wants to fight for and on whose terms. Provocative, mordant, and fiercely intelligent, The Summer Without Men is a gloriously vivacious tragi-comedy about women and girls, love and marriage, and the age-old war between the sexes - a novel for our times by one of the most acclaimed American writers."

There is a lot of talks about books in this novel but only one is mentioned: "Persuasion" by Jane Austen which is read by the protaganist's mother and her book club "The Rolling Meadows".

Dostoevsky, Fyodor "The Brothers Karamazov"

Dostoevsky, Fyodor "The Brothers Karamazov" (Russian: Братья Карамазовы/Brat'ya Karamazovy) - 1879-80

I have always loved reading Russian authors. Dostoevsky is no exception. And this novel had more than 1,200 pages, so the right book for me.

This is not the first book I read from this author and he has not disappointed me so far. Brilliant writing, the setting is always exceptional, the way the story unfolds, the many different characters he describes in detail. Everything is so well done. You get caught from page one until you are finished. What a book!

And the book is packed full with philosophical and religious questions, questions about human existence. The three brothers Karamazov all represent a different side, all have different answers. Dmitri or Mitya is most like the farther Fyodor, He is a soldier and leads an unrestrained life. Ivan has visited the university and is more an enlightened, mind-oriented, atheist intellectual. Alexei or Alyosha, the protagonist, is a religious man, he is a novice in a monastery.

Then there is a fourth, illegitimate brother who is a servant in the father's house.

We discover the Russian society through these different men and their miseries. The story is spellbinding, not the easiest of reads but certainly one of the most deserving. It is a philosophical as well as a spiritual drama, an account of a country that is about to change into modern times and what that does to its inhabitants. A story that stays with us for a long long time.

After "Crime and Punishment", "The Gambler" and "The Adolescent", this is my fourth novel by this fantastic author. I am sure it won't be the last.

From the back cover:

"In 1880 Dostoevsky completed The Brothers Karamazov, the literary effort for which he had been preparing all his life. Compelling, profound, complex, it is the story of a patricide and of the four sons who each had a motive for murder: Dmitry, the sensualist, Ivan, the intellectual; Alyosha, the mystic; and twisted, cunning Smerdyakov, the bastard child. Frequently lurid, nightmarish, always brilliant, the novel plunges the reader into a sordid love triangle, a pathological obsession, and a gripping courtroom drama. But throughout the whole, Dostoevsky searches for the truth - about man, about life, about the existence of God. A terrifying answer to man's eternal questions, this monumental work remains the crowning achievement of perhaps the finest novelist of all time."

Nietzsche, Friedrich "Beyond Good and Evil"

Nietzsche, Friedrich "Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future/On the Genealogy of Morality" (German: Jenseits von Gut und Böse. Vorspiel einer Philosophie der Zukunft/Zur Geneologie der Moral) - 1886

A tough book by a great mind, it's hard to follow him all the time, you definitely can't read it in one go and digest it that way, you have to take it in small chunks. And even if you don't always agree with his thoughts, they certainly get you thinking.

From the back cover:

"Beyond Good and Evil confirmed Nietzsche's position as the towering European philosopher of his age. The work dramatically rejects the tradition of Western thought with its notions of truth and God, good and evil. Nietzsche demonstrates that the Christian world is steeped in a false piety and infected with a 'slave morality'. With wit and energy, he turns from this critique to a philosophy that celebrates the present and demands that the individual imposes their own 'will to power' upon the world."

Walser, Martin "Runaway Horse"

Walser, Martin "Runaway Horse" (German: Ein fliehendes Pferd) - 1978

This is an interesting story where you can see how people who are friends when young grow into completely different kind of people. Helmut and his wife Sabine have become reclusive, they enjoy their holidays with their books and a glass of wine. Klaus has married a second time, a much younger wife, and they are a lot more active. They happen to meet again after twenty years while on holidays. Neither of them really looks like what they seem. They both try to hide who they really are. And they certainly both have a good deal of midlife crisis to deal with. Their wives also play a role in this but all their husbands want is their support.

A good story that gets us to think about how we want the world to see us and what we are prepared to sacrifice for them to believe us. A novella, far too short for my liking but I really enjoyed it. Martin Walser is a well-known German author and this was my first book by him. Certainly not my last.

From the back cover:

"The accidental reunion of two men, former schoolmates, and their wives in a lakeside resort leads to a comparison of memories, an awkward intimacy, and a moment of terrible, yet exhilarating liberation."

I read this in the original German language.

Martin Walser received the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade (Friedenspreis) in 1998.

Wolf, Naomi "The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty are used against Women"

Wolf, Naomi "The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty are used against Women" - 1990

The next book introduced into the Emma Watson Book Club - Our Shared Shelf.

I didn't think I would like this book as much as I did. I didn't think it would be as contemporary as it was. After all, this book was written in 1990 about the way women "obey" the "God of Beauty". As I can tell when I look around, nothing has changed since then, even though almost three decades have passed.

What can be done? First of all, I think this book should be read by everyone, not only women. There aer so many ideas and thoughts that should make every woman be happy with the body they have and not try to run after a fantasy image.

We should all be aware that the image of a "beautiful woman" is imposed on us, that hardly anyone really judges us the way we think they do and that, if we all stick together, women shouldn't be regarded in the workforce the same way as men are.

I remember the many articles I read about Angela Merkel, our current chancellor, and her clothes. Articles that would never have been written about her male colleagues. And I always wondered what that has to do with her ability to run a country. Nothing. She dresses decently and that's enough for me. And that should be enough for any woman who works no matter where.

I never had big issues with the way I look. I wouldn't call myself pretty and I certainly don't have a good figure anymore after giving birth to two children but I've always told myself whoever doesn't like me this way can just stay away. But I know how many women do have issues, they go from one diet to the next and suffer even more afterwards. If only they would all read this book!

However, there are a few things I have learned from this book. For example, I now know why I don't like women's magazines.

If I had a daughter, I would give her this book right now. But I think my sons should read it, as well in order to help their partners in future.

From the back cover:
"In the struggle for women's equality, there is one hurdle that has yet to be fully cleared - the myth of female beauty. It challenges every woman, every day, by seeking to undermine psychology and covertly the material freedoms that feminism has achieved for women. And, fueled by new technology in media and medicine, its ravages are reaching epidemic proportions.
The Beautify Myth cuts to the root of the 'beauty backlash,' exposing the relentless cult of female beauty - antierotic, averse to love, and increasingly savage - as a political weapon against women's recent advances, placing women in more danger today than ever before.
Naomi Wolf tracks the tyranny of the beauty myth throughout its history and reveals its newly sophisticated function today - in the home and at work; in literature and the media; in relationships, between men and women and between women and women. With an arsenal of sometimes shocking examples, Wolf confronts the beauty industry and its influence and uncovers the ominous, hidden agenda that drives this destructive obsession.
In a searing, timely analyses, The Beauty Myth indicts the new forces coercing women into participating in their own torture - starving themselves and even submitting their bodies to the knife. A direct descendant of The Female Mystique and The Female Eunuch, this book is a cultural hand grenade for the 1990s."

Mercier, Pascal "Lea"

Mercier, Pascal "Lea" (German: Lea) - 2007

This is my third book by Pascal Mercier. He is just such an excellent writer, I need to read his fourth book (Der Klavierstimmer, not translated yet), as well, and then he urgently has to write more.

Pascal Mercier's writing style is almost like poetry, even though he stays very close with his topic. You can tell he is a philosopher in his "first life", he brings a lot of expertise into the story.

In this story, we hear from a father whose daugher learns to play the violin and who is a great talent. This talent destroys everyone's life around her, including her own. Her passion is described in a way that it is easy to follow but hard to understand. You want to get inside her brain, what is she thinking, what is everyone else thinking.

The author creates a great story with fantastic figures. The storyteller is a third person, a brilliant idea to get a little distance to the main characters.

A perfect story, a perfect read.

From the back cover:

"Pascal Mercier's Night Train to Lisbon mesmerized readers around the world, and went on to become an international bestseller, establishing Mercier as a breakthrough European literary talent. Now, in Lea, he returns with a tender, impassioned, and unforgettable story of a father's love and a daughter's ambition in the wake of devastating tragedy.

It all starts with the death of Martijn van Vliet's wife. His grief-stricken young daughter, Lea, cuts herself off from the world, lost in the darkness of grief. Then she hears the unfamiliar sound of a violin playing in the hall of a train station, and she is brought back to life. Transfixed by a busker playing Bach, Lea emerges from her mourning, vowing to learn the instrument. And her father, witnessing this delicate spark, promises to do everything and anything in his power to keep her happy.

Lea grows into an extraordinary musical talent--her all-consuming passion leads her to become one of the finest players in the country--but as her fame blossoms, her relationship with her father withers. Unable to keep her close, he inadvertently pushes Lea deeper and deeper into this newfound independence and, desperate to hold on to his daughter, Martin is driven to commit an act that threatens to destroy them both.

A revelatory portrait of genius and madness, Lea delves into the demands of artistic excellence as well as the damaging power of jealousy and sacrifice. Mercier has crafted a novel of intense clarity, illuminating the poignant ways we strive to understand ourselves and our families."

I also read:
Mercier, Pascal "Perlmann's Silence" (German: Perlmanns Schweigen) - 1995
Mercier, Pascal "Night Train to Lisbon" (German: Nachtzug nach Lissabon) - 2004

Pinkola Estés, Clarissa "Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype"

Pinkola Estés, Clarissa "Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype" - 1992

The latest book that was suggested by Emma Watson from the Goodreads group "Our Shared Shelf". There have been good and bad books, in my opinion, in this group. This is one of the better ones. Dr. Pinkola Estés talks about myths about the Wild Woman, she tells us fairy tales, folk sagas, anything that has to do with women standing on their own feet, defending themselves and their offspring and explains the symbolism behind it. Highly interesting.

The author explains so much about the human being so that this book should not just be read by women, also a great selection for men who would like to understand women better. You can tell this is written by a professional who knows everything about the human psyche, has studied it for a long time and always tries to look at every aspect of every story. Dr. Pinkola Estés is a Jungian analyst and even if you have never heard of Jung, she explains everything very detailed so that anyone can follow her stories and her analysis.

I have read a lot of fairy tales and there were quite a few stories that I heard in a similar version but every story the author retold was like new to me the way she explained them.

I borrowed this book from the library but might want to buy it for myself to read it again some other time. That's how good it was. And encouraging book that teaches us a lot about ourselves.

From the back cover:
"Within every woman there is a wild and natural creature, a powerful force, filled with good instincts, passionate creativity, and ageless knowing. Her name is Wild Woman, but she is an endangered species. Though the gifts of wildish nature come to us at birth, society's attempt to 'civilize' us into rigid roles has plundered this treasure, and muffled the deep, life-giving messages of our own souls. Without Wild Woman, we become over-domesticated, fearful, uncreative, trapped. Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D., Jungian analyst and cantadora storyteller, shows how woman's vitality can be restored through what she calls 'psychic archeological digs' into the bins of the female unconscious. In Women Who Run with the Wolves, Dr. Estes uses multicultural myths, fairy tales, folk tales, and stories chosen from over twenty years of research that help women reconnect with the healthy, instinctual, visionary attributes of the Wild Woman archetype. Dr. Estes collects the bones of many stories, looking for the archetypal motifs that set a woman's inner life into motion. 'La Loba' teaches about the transformative function of the psyche. In 'Bluebeard,' we learn what to do with wounds that will not heal; in 'Skeleton Woman,' we glimpse the mystical power of relationship and how dead feelings can be revived; 'Vasalisa the Wise' brings our lost womanly instincts to the surface again; 'The Handless Maiden' recovers the Wild Woman initiation rites; and 'The Little Match Girl' warns against the insidious dangers of a life spent in fantasy. In these and other stories, we focus on the many qualities of Wild Woman. We retrieve, examine, love, and understand her, and hold her against our deep psyches as one whois both magic and medicine. In Women Who Run with the Wolves, Dr. Estes has created a new lexicon for describing the female psyche. Fertile and lifegiving, it is a psychology of women in the truest sense, a knowing of the soul.."

Plath, Sylvia "The Bell Jar"

Plath, Sylvia "The Bell Jar"- 1963

What an interesting read. I am not the biggest poetry reader, so I only ever heard of Sylvia Plath but never actually read anything by her. So, I was not unhappy when one of our book club members suggested this as our next read.

And what a book it is. I think everyone who thinks depression is not an illness and that people should just "snap out of it", "get busier so they don't think so much" etc., should read this. Although, I doubt that will ever happen.

Sylvia Plath manages to show us the inside of a young girl who goes from being an ordinary student who wants to become a writer to being possessed by the dark dog who doesn't want to leave her.

You can tell the author spoke from experience, She suffered from depression herself, committed suicide in the end, You can really understand, follow her way, her debilitating condition, her struggles, her tragedy. I am sorry she only wrote this one novel, she could have given the world so much more.

If you are interested in this topic, suffer from depression yourself or know someone who does, watch this video by the World Health Organization. "I had a black dog, his name was depression." And don't hesitate to look for professional help.

We discussed this in our book club in January 2017.

From the back cover:
"At last Sylvia Plath's only published novel is available in her own country, eight years after it was published in England under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas. This extraordinary work chronicles the crackup of Ester Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, successful--but slowly going under, and maybe for the last time. Step by careful step, Sylvia Plath takes us with Ester through a painful month in New York as a contest-winning junior editor on a magazine, her increasingly strained relationships with her mother and the boy she dated in college, and eventually devastatingly, into the madness itself. The reader is drawn into her breakdown with such intensity that her insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies. Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche is rare in any novel. In this case, the work reveals so much about the sources of Sylvia Plath's own tragedy that is publication must be considered a landmark in contemporary literature."

In 1982, Sylvia Plath won a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for "The Collected Poems".

Oates, Joyce Carol "The Man Without a Shadow"

Oates, Joyce Carol "The Man Without a Shadow" - 2016

I am one of the biggest Joyce Carol Oates fans. I have not read all of her books, yet, but whenever I come across a new one, I just have to read it. So, I was glad to find this on the "new" bookshelf in my library and had to borrow it right away.

Like all her other stories, this is a highly interesting, fascinating one, one that captivates you from the first page and doesn't release you until the last page has been turned. We get to learn the characters all so well, their thoughts, their hopes, their ambitions, their wishes for the future. Only, that for one of them in this novel there is no real future, it always ends after seven minutes. One of the two main characters suffers from amnesia, the other one is a scientist who studies his brain in particular and thereby hopes to find more insight into the human brain in general.

All of JCO's novels have a definitive distinction, she never repeats her subject, every book can stand on its own and gives so much insight into the topic. The words in her stories flow together in a natural way, even her scientific parts make sense to someone who is not scientific at all, like me. Her characters are complex, not easy, not flawless at all, just interesting to watch. While following the stories of Margot and Elihu, we can try to understand what memory means, why we remember certain parts of our lives and not others and what it would mean if all that was taken from us.

After reading this book, I only have one question, the same I ask myself every time I read one of JCO's novels: When is she finally going to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature?

From the back cover:

"In 1965, a young research scientist named Margot Sharpe is introduced to Elihu Hoopes, an attractive, charismatic amnesiac whose short-term memory has been devastated by a brief illness.

Charming, mysterious, and deeply lonely, Eli is tortured by his condition. Trapped eternally in the present moment, he is also haunted by a fragmented memory from his childhood: the disturbing image of an unknown girl’s body, floating under the surface of a lake.

Inspired and moved by her exceptional patient, Margot dedicates her professional life to him and, in so doing, establishes for herself an exceptional career in the rapidly expanding field of neuroscience.
But where is the line between scientific endeavor and personal obsession? And how to interpret the wishes of a person who is trapped outside time?

Atmospheric and unsettling, The Man Without a Shadow is a poignant exploration of loneliness, ethics, passion, aging, and memory - intricately, ambitiously structured and made both vivid and unnerving by Oates’s eye for detail and her searing insight into the human psyche."

Two books are mentioned in the novel that talk about the same subject:
Luria, Alexander R. "The Man with a Shattered World. The History of a Brain Wound" (Goodreads)
Luria, Alexander "The Mind of a Mnenomist. A Little Book About a Vast Memory" (Goodreads)

Hooks, Bell "All About Love: New Visions"

Hooks, Bell "All About Love: New Visions" - 1999

I read this because it was suggested in the Goodreads group created by Emma Watson "Our Shared Shelf".

I thought this might be a good and interesting non-fiction book but found that it sounded more like those self-help ones that promise that everything will be fine as long as you love yourself and love the world and all such stuff. Yeah, I'm not really a yoga-meditation kind of person and I don't believe that you can change everything in the world once you start looking at it different. How will we get rid of terrorists? Love yourself? How will we prevent World War III? Love yourself? You see the drift and you see the problem I have with that sort of stuff. I have lived in a very hateful environment for a long long time and I cannot change people's minds, I have to live with it. It doesn't make it better if people start telling me that I just have to change my mind and everything will be find. Would they have told that to a Jew who was carted off to a concentration camp? And how many of them would have believed them?

All in all, I think this book is more depressive than uplifting. One of the books where I wish I could speed-read and just get through a hundred pages in a minute, that sort of thing.  I will stop now because otherwise I will just be rambling on like the author did.

From the back cover: "A visionary and accessible book, bell hooks's All About Love offers radical new ways to think about love. Here, hooks, one of our most acute social critics, takes the themes that put her on the map - the relationship between love and sexuality, and the interconnectedness between the public and the private - and challenges the prevailing notion that romantic love is more important than all other bonds.
All About Love is a blueprint for finding myriad types of love, which hold the redemptive power to change our minds and lives. In thirteen concise chapters, hooks explains how our everyday notions of what it means to give and receive love often fail us, and how these ideals are established in early childhood. But challenging us to think of love as an action, not a feeling, hooks offers a rethinking  of self-love (without narcissism) that will bring peace and compassion to our personal and professional lives.
Imaginative and original, hooks shows how love heals the wounds we bear as individuals and as a nation. All About Love, written in vivid, provocative, and sensual language, is as much about culture as it is about intimacy. In exploring the ties between love and loss, hooks takes us on a journey that is sacred and transcendent. Her destination: our own hearts and communities."

Lamb, Wally "We are Water"

Lamb, Wally "We are Water" - 2013

I have only read four books by Wally Lamb so far but I can honestly say that he belongs to one of my favourite authors. He is not just a good writer, a writer who can only be admired for his talent, he manages to put so many different subjects into his stories, every single one could be a whole series. A friend mentioned that she has the feeling that he is talking to you rather than her reading his story. I think that is an excellently accurate description of the author and his writing. I also love how he goes back and forth between characters and time, thereby building up the suspension until you can hardly bare it anymore. Still, he does not confuse you with his writing, he makes it easy to follow the story. And it feels real, you feel included. That's why I love Wally Lamb. And he is one of the successful authors I've read from the beginning of his career.

This is a highly interesting story of a family full of secrets. Old secrets and new secrets. Secrets outside of the family and secrets inside. This is a very intense novel that brings up all kinds of emotions and fears. It is written from many aspects, most of the main characters have a possibility to describe their view of the story. We can see both sides of alcoholism, for example, of child abuse (not that anyone wants to defend the "other" side but it's interesting to see how these stories develop), of almost any negative side of our society, racism, prisons, drugs, anything you can imagine, it's in there. A family, mother, father, three children, all mostly successful in their jobs, looks nice from the outside. But Wally Lamb shows us the inside. Intriguing.

Now I only have one question: Mr. Lamb, when are you going to write your next book?

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2025.

From the back cover:

"Anna Oh, mother of three and successful artist, is picking out her wedding dress for the second time in her life. In the pretty, rustic town of Three Rivers Connecticut, where she raised her kids, Anna is preparing to marry Viveca, who is the opposite of her ex-husband in almost every way. But the wedding provokes very mixed reactions, opening a Pandora’s Box of toxic secrets – dark and painful truths which will change the family dynamic forever.
We are Water is a brilliant portrait of modern America, written by a beloved and bestselling author who tackles life's complex issues with his trademark humour, wisdom and compassion."

While looking up this book, I have learned that there is another fiction novel by Wally Lamb that I have not read (Wishin' and Hopin': A Christmas Story) as well as two non-fiction books about women prisoners that I have not yet read. Will have to put them on my wishlist.

My reviews to his other books are here.

Tanpınar, Ahmet Hamdi "The Time Regulation Institute"

Tanpınar, Ahmet Hamdi "The Time Regulation Institute" (Turkish: Saatleri Ayarlama Enstitüsü) - 1961

Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar was not known to me until now. Except that one of my favourite authors, Orhan Pamuk, says that he is his favourite author. Could there be a better recommendation?

The story is satire at its best. What do we not need? Bureaucracy. And what do we need even less than bureaucracy? An institute that is worth nothing, that does not serve any purpose and that is full of people who are related to its creator.

The author manages to tell a hilarious tale of an adventurer who uses mankind's weaknesses against itself. The protagonists Hayri Irdal and his opponent Halit Ayarci could not be any different and, yet, they complete each other perfectly. They represent both the old and the modern Turkey, the bridge between Orient and Occident. Together they form "The Time Regulation Institute" that wants to ensure that everyone has the correct time. Even read without the background, it is a hilarious story and Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar manages to get you interested every single second you are reading the book.

It's as contemporary now as it was more than half a century ago when it was written. Next to a pleasurable story, it gives you a brilliant insight into Turkish culture and history.

If you like Turkish authors, this is a MUST.

We discussed this in our international book club in January 2015.

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2025.

From the back cover:

"A literary discovery: an uproarious tragicomedy of modernization, in its first-ever English translation

Perhaps the greatest Turkish novel of the twentieth century, being discovered around the world only now, more than fifty years after its first publication, The Time Regulation Institute is an antic, freewheeling send-up of the modern bureaucratic state.

At its center is Hayri Irdal, an infectiously charming antihero who becomes entangled with an eccentric cast of characters - a television mystic, a pharmacist who dabbles in alchemy, a dignitary from the lost Ottoman Empire, a “clock whisperer” - at the Time Regulation Institute, a vast organization that employs a hilariously intricate system of fines for the purpose of changing all the clocks in Turkey to Western time. Recounted in sessions with his psychoanalyst, the story of Hayri Irdal’s absurdist misadventures plays out as a brilliant allegory of the collision of tradition and modernity, of East and West, infused with a poignant blend of hope for the promise of the future and nostalgia for a simpler time."

Montagu, Ewen "The Man Who Never Was"

Montagu, Ewen "The Man Who Never Was. World War II's Boldest Counterintelligence Operation" - 1953

"Operation Mincemeat". This could have been a great title of the book, as well but it was the title of the British plan to make the Nazis believe they wanted to invade anything but Sicily.

What a story. I had heard about it. But it has been described in so much detail by someone who was actually involved, it was a great read. The work, the idea to give a dead man false papers and false information so the Nazis would believe in a plan that wasn't there. Fantastic.

This is what the real "James Bond" is like, this is why "intelligence" and "intelligent" have the same root. Cunning ideas mixed with a lot of imagination and some thoughtful planning. An intriguing story, fascinating read.

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2025.

From the back cover:

"The Man Who Never Was provides an exciting and accurate record of the counter-intelligence conspiracy, Operation Mincemeat, which paved the way for the Allied invasion of Sicily in July 1943. Ewen Montagu, who masterminded the whole scheme, gives his personal account of the audacious and innovative plot to outwit the Germans by washing up a dead body on Spanish shores, complete with apparently confidential information concealed about his person. The preparations were fraught with tensions, as unforeseen difficulties were faced in creating a life persona for 'the man who never was'. Furthermore, as the new introduction by intelligence expert Alan Stripp reveals, failure of the operation could have had devastating results."

Baxter, Charles "The Soul Thief"

Baxter, Charles "The Soul Thief" - 2008

I saw this novel in the library and thought it sounded interesting. Well, the title caught my eye.

The book has an interesting narrative but is slightly weird nonetheless. There is a lot of psychology in it. Nathaniel Mason is a student who is more or less stalked by a guy called Jerome Coolberg. You get a strange feeling reading about his story. All the time, you are waiting for it all to come together but it remains strange until the end.

Charles Baxter is supposed to be a great writer but I'm not sure I will read any more of his novels anytime soon.

From the back cover: 

 

"During Nathaniel Mason’s first few months as a graduate student in upstate New York, he is drawn into a tangle of relationships with people who seem to hover just beyond his grasp. There’s Theresa, alluring but elusive, and Jamie, who is fickle if not wholly unavailable. But Jerome Coolberg is the most mysterious and compelling. Not only cryptic about himself, he seems to have appropriated parts of Nathaniel’s past that Nathaniel cannot remember having told him about. It is Jerome who seems to trigger the events that precipitate Nathaniel’s total breakdown, and Jerome who shows up 30 years later--Nathaniel having finally reconstituted his life--to suggest, with the most staggering consequences, that Nathaniel’s identity may in fact not be his own.

In The Soul Thief, Charles Baxter has given us one of his most beautifully wrought and unexpected works of fiction: at once lyrical and eerie, acutely observant in its sensual and emotional detail and audaciously metaphysical in its underpinnings. It is a brilliant novel--one that is certain to expand both his already-stellar reputation and his readership."

Shriver, Lionel "We need to talk about Kevin"

Shriver, Lionel "We need to talk about Kevin" - 2003

What is going through the mind of a mass murderer? What is going through the mind of his mother? This book is trying to answer that question.

Eva is writing letters. Letters trying to explain to her husband how she never got close to their son. An interesting approach to the problem.

Being the mother of two sons myself, it was very hard for me to read this book and, yet, I couldn't put it down. Personally, I never met a child like that. I can hardly believe they exist. And, if he was really, how come she didn't get any help at all, nobody noticed that she couldn't do it on her own?

The marriage between the two seemed doomed from the beginning. And we all know that it is the worst idea to have a child in such a circumstance. A child, any child, will change the life of their parents, and they need to stick together in order to get through this. Even an uncomplicated child has sleepless nights, even the slowest child will try to "train" their parents and if they don't have a common rule, the child notices that straight away and will play the two against each other.

I don't think it's Eva's fault that her son turned out the way he turned out. I also don't think it's the father's fault but if he had been a little more understanding, things might have gone a different way. Of course, he probably sees it completely different and we would learn more if he had been able to tell his part of the story, as well.

Anyway, Lionel Shriver managed to get under the skin of both the mother and the son. I can't believe she has no children of her own, she described everything so well.

Even though the book itself was a shocker already, the end is even more shocking. I won't spoil it here for anyone who hasn't read the book, yet, but I did not think this was going to happen. And, yet, despite everything that has happened, it is very hopeful that Eva visits Kevin in prison and even wants him to come back to her after he has done his sentence.

Definitely a book everyone should read.

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2025.

From the back cover:

"The gripping international bestseller about motherhood gone awry 

Eva never really wanted to be a mother - and certainly not the mother of the unlovable boy who murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker, and a much-adored teacher who tried to befriend him, all two days before his sixteenth birthday. Now, two years later, it is time for her to come to terms with marriage, career, family, parenthood, and Kevin’s horrific rampage in a series of startlingly direct correspondences with her estranged husband, Franklin. Uneasy with the sacrifices and social demotion of motherhood from the start, Eva fears that her alarming dislike for her own son may be responsible for driving him so nihilistically off the rails."

Dostoevsky, Fyodor "Crime and Punishment"

Dostoevsky, Fyodor "Crime and Punishment" (Russian: Преступление и наказание = Prestupleniye i nakazaniye) - 1866

I can't mention it often enough. I love classic novels and I love Russian authors. The way they describe every situation, every little detail, it's priceless and unique.

In "Crime and Punishment", Dostoevsky manages to bring in so many different topics. It is a classic crime novel but it is also a historical novel, and it is also a psychological and philosophical work. No wonder he needs around 800 pages to describe a crime and its redemption.

You always feel like you are the protagonist or any of the other characters in the novel, you can think the way they think. The author is just that great. This story brings up a lot of questions about the meaning of life, about society and how we all relate to each other. There have been many answers over the centuries, I am sure, but everyone needs to find their own solutions, their own answers.

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2025.

From the back cover:

"Crime and Punishment is one of the greatest and most readable novels ever written. From the beginning we are locked into the frenzied consciousness of Raskolnikov who, against his better instincts, is inexorably drawn to commit a brutal double murder.

From that moment on, we share his conflicting feelings of self-loathing and pride, of contempt for and need of others, and of terrible despair and hope of redemption: and, in a remarkable transformation of the detective novel, we follow his agonised efforts to probe and confront both his own motives for, and the consequences of, his crime.

The result is a tragic novel built out of a series of supremely dramatic scenes that illuminate the eternal conflicts at the heart of human existence: most especially our desire for self-expression and self-fulfilment, as against the constraints of morality and human laws; and our agonised awareness of the world's harsh injustices and of our own mortality, as against the mysteries of divine justice and immortality."

I also read "The Adolescent" and “The Gambler” and will certainly read more in the future.