The non-western books that every student should read

Last year, a friend sent me an article from the Guardian by Sunny Singh, lecturer at London Metropolitan University and author of "Hotel Arcadia". It was called called "The non-western books that every student should read". 

I forwarded it to my book club and we decided to read at least one of the books from the list. We then decided on "So Long a Letter" by the Senegalese author Mariama Bâ. It was a great book and I decided I would love to read all of those book. One of them (Palace Walk) had been on my wishlist for ages anwyay. 

Read the article here. And this is the list with links to the books I already read: 

Ananthamurthy, U. R. "Samskara" (ಸಂಸ್ಕಾರ/Rites) - 1965
Bâ, Mariama "So Long a Letter" (Une si longue lettre) - 1979 
Fanon, Frantz "The Wretched of the Earth" (Les damnés de la terre) -1961 
Khedairi, Betool "Absent" (غايب/Gabe) - 2004
Mahfouz, Naguib "Palace Walk" (بين القصرين/Bayn al-qasrayn) - 1956 
Narayan, R. K. "Malgudi Omnibus" (Trilogy: Swami and Friends, 1935; The Bachelor of Arts, 1937; The English Teacher, 1945)
Ruzhen, Li "Flowers in the Mirror" (鏡花緣/Jing Hua Yuan) - 1827 
Unigwe, Chika "On Black Sisters’ Street" (Fata Morgana) - 2007
"Dhammapada" (धम्मपद), Buddhist text - ca. 300 BCE 

I still think this is a wonderful list written by someone who obviously knows her business. It gives a lot of inspiration to anyone who wants to broaden their mind and understand people from other parts of this world.

Book Quotes of the Week

"Emerson said that a library is a magic chamber in which there are many enchanted spirits. They wake when we call them. When the book lies unopened, it is literally, geometrically, a volume, a thing among things. When we open it, when the book surrenders itself to its reader, the aesthetic event occurs. And even for the same reader the same book changes, for the change; we are the river of Heraclitus, who said that the man of yesterday is not the man of today, who will not be the man of tomorrow. We change incessantly, and each reading of a book, each rereading, each memory of that rereading, reinvents the text. The text too is the changing river of Heraclitus." Jorge Luis Borges

"Libraries literally aren't just a place to obtain books for free. They're one of the few public spaces left in our society where you're allowed to exist without the expectation of spending money." Long Tweets McGee

"If you lay in your bed at night and haven’t learned anything new that day, get out of the bed and read a book." R. Moore

"With books I am never alone." N.N.
[If anyone can tell me the originator of this quote, I'd be very thankful and would happily include the name.] 

Find more book quotes here.

Hastings, Max "The Secret War"

Hastings, Max "The Secret War: Spies, Codes And Guerrillas, 1939–45" - 2015

A highly interesting book if you are interested in this subject.

We always hear about the battles of a war, more rarely about what is going on behind the scenes, in this case, what did the secret agents or spies (depending on which side you were, the first lot was always your own, the second that of the enemy) do during World War II? What were their successes, what their downfalls?

The author has collected an immense treasure of details and put them all together, the book almost reads like a spy story itself. There is so much in it, if you don't study this at university, you probably will not want to go into so much detail but you can always decide what to retain and what not.

Brilliant book. Brilliant writing.

From the back cover:
"In The Secret War, Max Hastings presents a worldwide cast of characters and extraordinary sagas of intelligence and Resistance to create a new perspective on the greatest conflict in history. The book links tales of high courage ashore, at sea and in the air to the work of the brilliant ‘boffins’ battling the enemy’s technology. Here are not only the unheralded codebreaking geniuses of Bletchley Park, but also their German counterparts who achieved their own triumphs and the fabulous espionage networks created, and so often spurned, by the Soviet Union. With its stories of high policy and human drama, the book has been acclaimed as the best history of the secret war ever written."

Han, Kang "The Vegetarian"

Han, Kang "The Vegetarian" (Korean: 채식주의자/Ch'angbi) - 2007

When I found this book, I thought it might be about a woman who became a vegetarian. And it was. But also, it wasn't. This book has been described as dark and that is correct. But it is also weird. It is hard to follow the thoughts of the protagonists, I always try to empathize with any problem they encounter but I had a hard time doing it in this case.

This story is about two sisters and their husbands, about love and lust. There are three stories about Yeong-hye, the woman who turns vegetarian and whose life takes a strange turn and nobody's life will ever be the same again. The first story is told by her husband, the second by her brother-in-law, the third and last by her sister.

I would have loved to like this book. But I didn't, really.

From the back cover:

"A beautiful, unsettling novel about rebellion and taboo, violence and eroticism, and the twisting metamorphosis of a soul.

Before the nightmares began, Yeong-hye and her husband lived an ordinary, controlled life. But the dreams—invasive images of blood and brutality—torture her, driving Yeong-hye to purge her mind and renounce eating meat altogether. It’s a small act of independence, but it interrupts her marriage and sets into motion an increasingly grotesque chain of events at home. As her husband, her brother-in-law and sister each fight to reassert their control, Yeong-hye obsessively defends the choice that’s become sacred to her. Soon their attempts turn desperate, subjecting first her mind, and then her body, to ever more intrusive and perverse violations, sending Yeong-hye spiraling into a dangerous, bizarre estrangement, not only from those closest to her, but also from herself."

Kang Han received the Booker International Prize in 2016 for "The Vegetarian".

Kang Han received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2024 "for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life".

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

Book Quotes of the Week

"The greatest deed you can do for anyone is not free them from pain or hunger, but from ignorance." Matshona Dhliwayo

"Here's what I mean by the miracle of language. When you're falling into a good book, exactly as you might fall into a dream, a little conduit opens, a passageway between a reader's heart and a writer's, a connection that transcends the barriers of continents and generations and even death ... And here's the magic. You're different. You can never go back to being exactly the same person you were before you disappeared into that book." Anthony Doerr

"In dystopia, when time has run out and the worst is yet to come, the urge to live still remains." Elizabeth Fifer

"Sometimes you just need to lay on the couch and read for a couple of years." N.N.
[If anyone can tell me the originator of this quote, I'd be very thankful and would happily include the name.] 

Find more book quotes here.

Hanks, Tom "Uncommon Type. Some Stories"

Hanks, Tom "Uncommon Type. Some Stories" - 2017

Sometimes I don't know why I still do it. I'm not the biggest fan of short stories. Too short for my liking. But I couldn't withstand getting this book. Tom Hanks a writer? And stories about typewriters? Has to be good.

And it was. Some really nice stories that could have easily been made into a large book - maybe we'll see them in a film one day, I wouldn't be surprised ...

Anyway, all these stories have something in common. In every single one of them, there is a typewriter, mostly an older one, not an electric one, not a computer, no, one of those nice old mechanical ones.

I always have to think about Tom Hanks in "You've got mail" where he deletes a whole paragraph letter by letter. And that alone makes me laugh.

I wouldn't say all the stories are funny. Or all the stories are thoughtful. Or all the stories are ... you get it, the stories are all quite different. But I did enjoy all of them.

From the back cover:

"A hectic, funny sexual affair between two best friends. A World War II veteran dealing with his emotional and physical scars. A second-rate actor plunged into sudden stardom and a whirlwind press junket. A small-town newspaper columnist with old-fashioned views of the modern world. A woman adjusting to life in a new neighborhood after her divorce. Four friends going to the moon and back in a rocket ship constructed in the backyard. A teenage surfer stumbling into his father’s secret life.

These are just some of the people and situations that Tom Hanks explores in his first work of fiction, a collection of stories that dissects, with great affection, humour, and insight, the human condition and all its foibles. The stories are linked by one thing: in each of them, a typewriter plays a part, sometimes minor, sometimes central. To many, typewriters represent a level of craftsmanship, beauty and individuality that is harder and harder to find in the modern world. In his stories, Mr Hanks gracefully reaches that typewriter-worthy level.

Known for his honesty and sensitivity as an actor, Mr Hanks brings both those characteristics to his writing. Alternatingly whimsical, moving and occasionally melancholy, Uncommon Type is a book that will delight as well as surprise his millions of fans. It also establishes him as a welcome and wonderful new voice in contemporary fiction, a voice that perceptively delves beneath the surface of friendships, families, love and normal, everyday behaviour."

Happy March!

Happy March to all my friends and readers

New Calendar picture with this
beautiful watercolour painting by Hanka Koebsch

"Wo bleibt er denn?"
"Where is he then?" 

March was the first month of the Roman calendar. 

It was named after their god of war, Mars. 

The birthstone of this month is the jasper, another quartz, mostly red, yellow or brown. The green version with red spots is called heliotrope or bloodstone and this is the one that usually is considered the birthstone for March.

Enjoy this month with the beautiful watercolour painting by Hanka Koebsch. I think we can all guess what the little birdie is looking out for: Spring!

You can find many more wonderful pictures on their website here.