CailinoBAC's reading log

cailinoBAC · 15-05-2011 5:36pm #1

I keep meaning to start one of these logs but I've been very lazy about it. Then I realise that somebody will mention a book and I'll say that I've read it but I can't remember the first thing about it. Maybe just an impression (yeah, I really enjoyed that one,but I can't remember why...). Or I pick up a book in a bookshop, read the back cover and think 'that sounds like my kind of book' and only when I read a bit more I realise that I've read it before.
Also, I used to go to the boards book club and whether it was the book of the night or not, I could talk about books I'd read, but now I'm living in Spain I can't do that any more.
I don't really read as much as I used to, but when I go away I end up bringing a mini library with me. This happened 2 weeks ago when we went to Fes, so that seems like a good place to start.

I read
'Censoring an Iranian Love Story' by Shahriar Mandanipour
The 'Love Story' is set in Tehran and Sara and Dara both have a love for books banned in Iran. But the book is more about how the author can write a love story set in Iran when there is so much he can't write about and he has to try and argue his case with the head censor. Pretty much every review of the book mentions Kundera. I haven't read much Kundera so can't comment but it reminded me a lot of 'If on a Winter's Night a Traveller' by Italo Calvino. As both authors are namechecked in the book you can be sure of the influences. Most of the reviews also say that the story behind the story is more interesting than the love story itself. I don't quite agree, I enjoyed all the 'story' segments and it would have been nice to read if the author decided to write it as a true book and not just an exercise. So, yes, sometimes it's all a bit too clever for its own good, but even so, I loved it.

'Broken April' by Ismail Kadare
This book is set in the Albanian mountains. The premise seems so surreal that I thought it was all some alternative reality dreamt up by the author. Gjorg is a young man whose brother was killed by another man. So he has to kill that man. When this is done a relative of that man will have to kill him. It's not just some hot blooded revenge, it is all set out by a code called the Kanun and there are rules which must be obeyed. When somebody from one family is murdered, a male relative will murder the murderer, who in turn will be avenged. This goes on until all males in the family have been killed. A lot of men condemned in this way stay in 'towers of refuge' where they will be safe. I found the book most interesting when it stayed with Gjorg and focussed on his despair at the trap he's in. Some of the books focuses on a couple who decide to visit the high plateau on their honeymoon. The man is very interested in the Kanun, but the woman finds it horrifying. They didn't really seem like real people though, just a way for the author to put forward different reactions to the code.
Even though it's a long time since I've seen it, I was reminded a little of the film 'Before the Rain', set in Macedonia but starting, if I remember correctly with an Albanian girl (disguised as a boy) being chased by some people who claim she's killed their brother. Funnily enough it turns out this book has been made into a film called 'Behind the Sun' but the location was moved to Brazil.

'Death in the Andes' by Mario Vargas Llosa
While I enjoyed this overall, I found it quite confusing and I think I would need to start at the beginning again to fully understand it. Maybe I will do that some time, but not just yet. Though I'm interested enough to try out some other works by the same author. There are a few stories being told by different people and the book skips with no notice between the story being told, what you think is 'the present' and then it will turn out that that is not 'the present' but another telling of a story.Some of the reviews I've read since mention something that came as a surprise to me at the end of the book and I'm glad I didn't know about it in advance. Maybe it was signposted all the way along and I just missed it! Like Lituma, I was quite impatient to get back to the story of Tomasito and Mercedes.

'The Concert Ticket' by Olga Grushin
While this one also jumped between points of view now and then, it was much more straightforward. There were some echoes of 'The Dream Life of Sukharov' in the jumping between present, past and dreams of present and past, but it wasn't quite as good. I'm a sucker for stories set in Russia, but my boyfriend got bored of this one and I can understand why some people would. In January of one year a queue starts forming outside a kiosk and it turns out that an exiled composer will be coming back to conduct his symphony. Again, as with Broken April, for a lot of the book I felt I had to suspend my disbelief but then it turned out that it was based on a true event - Stravinsky returned to Russia in 1962 and people queued for a year for the tickets. Even so, I find it difficult to understand why this would be so important to suspend life for a year. Also I didn't really think the son's motivation was very believable, whatever about that of the parents. It was very readable, but nowhere near as good as Sukharov.

'Madame Verona Comes Down the Hill' by Dimitri Verhulst
I have to confess that already in the 2 weeks since I read it I can't think of much to say about this one. Some of the scenes were quite funny, but sad at the same time, in its description of a village dying out due to the lack of young women. But on the whole, although I think it was trying to, it didn't change my life.

Ok, technically I didn't read this one that weekend, but I'll throw it in anyway:
'City of Thieves' by David Benioff
I wish I had more books like this in my house. To leave the topic of this particular book aside for the moment, well, I have in my house a lot of books that had been sitting unread for a few years in my home in Ireland. Then every so often when I'm home I splurge on books and end up bringing back a mixture of highbrow, wannabe highbrow to read at some stage (like on train journeys to Fes) and some potboilers and absolute trash to read straight away.I love when I find a book that is such a pageturner, but without being stupid or predictable and which I know I could read again from the beginning and enjoy just as much. I didn't really think that would be the case from reading the back of the book. The story is about a pair of boys/young men who are sent to look for a dozen eggs during the siege of Leningrad. That might not sound too promising, but it's a great story that is funny, but also doesn't hold back on the horror of the siege. And I just love the last line. I wonder if there will be a film at some stage, as the author is also a screenwriter.

Yesterday I finished 'All Souls' by Javier Marias.
When I mentioned at the start that I've read books I know I've loved but can't remember why, well one of those was 'A Heart so White' by the same writer. We read that for the book club a few years ago and I loved it for all sorts of reasons, but I've more or less forgotten what it was about. Now, having read another of his books, I can see why that might be the case. There is no story as such. That is, it's about two years of a Spanish man teaching (for a few hours a week anyway) in Oxford. This man is not the author, though apparently a lot of people assumed it was. I don't think it's his style to write a usual story with a beginning, middle and end. Each chapter starts off with a seemingly random anecdote, which will then be linked in with what went before. While we learn a lot about what the narrator sees and what he thinks about the people and events he sees we never really feel like we get to know him. I visited Oxford once and loved wandering around all the secondhand bookshops and imagined living there, though the Oxford of 'All Souls' does not sound so attractive. A lot of the descriptions are hilarious, but some of them could be anywhere when viewed through the eye of somebody living in a place that is not their own.

I'm not going to say what I'm reading next, as I'd rather only write about books I've finished. I've sometimes read books which I've found so-so and then the last few pages turn everything around (in either direction).

cailinoBAC · 21-05-2011 1:41pm

This week I read 'The Forsaken' by Tim Tzouliadis.

This was about the fate of American immigrants in the Soviet Union from the 1930s onwards.
I, like many others, I suppose, never really heard of Americans migrating to Russia at that time. The first I heard of it was when I read 'The Bronze Horseman' by Paulina Simons, where the lead character was one of those who had come over as a child. However, in that book his parents had moved to the USSR for idealogical reasons, whereas in this book it was shown that most moved because they were finding it difficult to survive in the Great Depression and they were promised well paid jobs in Russia helping put the 5 year plan into action. After a few short years the nightmare began.
I thought this was a great book, I read it any time I had some free time, though it turned out to be a lot shorter than I expected due to all the notes and the index! Although the focus of the story is the American immigrants it is impossible to separate that from the greater story of the terror, the purges and the gulag. It was sad to read about how little anybody tried to help these people and it's also disheartening to think about how many people in Russia today still think of Stalin as a great man. Very few of those who migrated made it back to the States. One of those, Thomas Sgovio, had such an amazing story. I'd love to read his book, but the copy I see on Amazon is $315 so maybe not...

I finished reading 'The Camino' by Shirley MacLaine.

I was going home a few weeks ago and saw this in the airport and thought I'd buy it for my Mam, who was going to be walking the Camino. I'd never heard of Shirley MacLaine's spirituality career, but I liked her as an actress. After a few pages of reading I began to think that it probably wouldn't be one to give to Mum. Well, I try to think of myself as openminded, but it she seemed a bit wacky and the further you went in the book the weirder it got. I suppose in some ways she acknowledges that people think her ideas are a bit odd, but even so. I actually did enjoy reading about the actual camino journey, but then she'd talk about how she fell asleep and had a dream and describe the dream in minute detail as if it was some great prophecy. She's written a few other books, but I think I'll be sticking to the movies.

I'll just add 'Naming the Bones' by Louise Welsh, which my boyfriend is currently reading. It was quite enjoyable, though I preferred her 'The Cutting Room' and 'The Bullet Trick'. Just flicking back through it now and I wonder if the author read 'All Souls' seeing as both protagonists are academics having affairs with a colleague's wife and both are mildly obsessed with the lives of forgotten writer.

cailinoBAC · 29-05-2011 12:50pm

Grrr, had written a reply out and it's disappeared. Too tired to write it all out again.

This week I read 'The Simple Story' by Leonardo Sciascia. It's actually a short story, simply written (as promised!) with a great ending. Also includes 'Candido' a kind of version of Candide in Sicily.

Also 'The Speed of Light' by Javier Cercas. Had been reading the first section over a few months and did not grab me, but read all the rest in the last few days and it really moved me at times. As part of it is similar to the author's life some of it is true and some blatantly not, a kind of alternate version.

cailinoBAC · 05-06-2011 1:10am

So I had an unexpected trip home and ran into HF. I'm not sure what I will actually get around to reading (sometimes what I buy and what I read are two different things) but I bought:
The Novel in the Viola by Natasha Solomons
The Rainbow and the Rose by Nevile Shute
Beside the Sea by Veronique Olmi
Kamchatka by Marcelo Figueras
Spring Flowers, Spring Frost by Ismail Kadare
Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene
The Berlin Novels by Christopher Isherwood

I started another book on the plane over but could see myself abandoning it for one of these over the next few days.

I just finshed Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson. I read another book of hers a long time ago but it did not have any of the same characters. I did not really enjoy it at first and I thought the author was trying to hard to be current, but I slowly got sucked in and soon could not put it down. However, at the end of it all, I still did not really get the need for the character of Tilly,

I also read Regeneration by Pat Barker.
I remember reading Siegfried Sassoon poems in school, so this was very interesting and I liked reading about the mix of other characters, both fictional and true. Maybe it is because of some other recent books I've read, but the war descriptions did not really move me at all. I thought the scene with the other psychiatrist at the end was very disturbing though.

cailinoBAC · 10-07-2011 11:39am

As I feared, I've let this slide. I'm going to try and update this one book at a time today, as if I try to write them all in one post I'll end up getting distracted and not update at all.

I've just finished Andrey Kurkov's The Good Angel of Death

Kolya, after finding a book hidden inside a copy of War and Peace, head off on a journey to Kazakhstan to dig for treasure. Taking the book most literally it's a funny picaresque journey, in which he meets a variety of people from different former Soviet republics and has many adventures. He gets tied up a few times, smells of cinnamon and caviar and acquires a Kazakh wife. He muses on the physical manifestation of the Ukrainian national spirit and how international harmony can be obtained through song and snickers bars. Perhaps we're supposed to think certain people are not real and certain episodes are hallucinogenic dreams (on top of the ones which we are told about) but it's more fun to take at face value, surreal as it is. After all, this is from the man who wrote 'Death and a Penguin', so cold reality is never really on the cards.

cailinoBAC · 10-07-2011 12:17pm

Dave Gorman vs. The Rest of the World
This was an easy read, mildly entertaining. I mean, I enjoyed it while I read it, but it didn't really seem to have a purpose. I suppose, he protests a lot about how his agent etc. try to make him do something work related about his game playing (basically he posted a message on twitter asking people if anyone wanted to play a game, and he meets them and plays the game with them) and then in the end he writes a book. He meets a variety of people, who all have interesting anecdotes. It's a bit of deja vu really. He drags out his most interesting story. I mean, it is unexpected, but I wonder if that was the one that persuaded him to write a book and I'm not sure if it was really worth it. I really enjoyed his first two books and I'll probably read whatever his next one is too, but I don't think he will ever pack the same punch. In a book anyway- I've yet to see him live and I still want to.

cailinoBAC · 10-07-2011 1:07pm

84 Charing Cross by Helene Hanff

Usually I prefer to read books before watching films. I haven't seen the film of this, but I went to see a play version a few years ago in Dublin and loved it. It really plucked at my heartstrings. So maybe the fact that the play was based on the letters (I'm not sure if it included all, but most of them) meant that reading the book didn't seem to add much as I knew everything already. The 'sequel' was new to me and was interesting. We take travel so much for granted these days and also for the Irish I suppose London would never have the same mythical status as for a broke American writer.

cailinoBAC · 10-07-2011 9:21pm

The Novel in the Viola by Natasha Solomons

I really enjoyed this story about a jewish girl from Vienna who goes to work in domestic service in England before the war. Saying that, it was quite predictable at times (especially if you read the back of the book). The reference to Rebecca in the first line is very obvious, and a few others throughout, so I thought it was a bit superfluous to have Elise go to watch the film too. In any case I think the style is a bit more like Eva Ibbotson (The Morning Gift for example). I have Mr. Rosenblum's List in my house somewhere and I want to read that now, I just have to find it...

cailinoBAC · 10-07-2011 9:53pm

No Way Down by Graham Bowley. This is the fascinating story of what happened on K2 on the 1st August 2008 and how 11 people did not make it back alive. The book is based on 100s of interviews and the author does his best to combine all the points of view.

cailinoBAC · 06-08-2011 8:35am

Lack of internet and I've really let this slide! Just going to write the names of the books at the moment before I forget and maybe come back later to write something about them:
Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay
One Red Paperclip by Kyle MacDonald
The Best of Everything by Rona Jaffe
The Troubles by J G Farrell
A Boy of Good Breeding by MiriamToews
The Berlin Novels by Christopher Isherwood
The Rainbow and the Rose by Nevile Shute

cailinoBAC · 18-09-2011 11:35am

Mary Lavelle by Kate O'Brien
Young Irish woman goes to Spain to live there for a year before getting married.
It's interesting how well this book holds up 90 years after it is set. I've never read any of Kate O'Brien's books before but I will be looking out for them again. I can understand why the Catholic Church was not happy with the book when it came out, but I don't think (could be very wrong here) that the author particularly meant an attack on the church, she was just writing a very simple and honest story. I could relate to it on a few levels, as an Irishwoman now living in Spain, trying to get to grips with the language, culture, expats and also thinking back to the relatively naive girl I was when I first went to work in Germany as a student.

Snowleg by Nicholas Shakespeare
English student meets East German girl briefly back in the 80s, lets her down and spends 20 years thinking about her. I enjoyed this as a superior page turner but sometimes I just got frustrated with the main character. Yes, I get that there's some turmoil, but why take it out on your parents by never visiting for example. If you're so torn up about the people who aren't in your life, why push away those who are? Also, it felt like the last third of the book we all knew how it was going to end and we were just waiting for Peter to figure it out for himself.

Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene
Vacuum cleaner salesman stumbles into secret service job.
I really did not expect to enjoy this book as much as I did. It should not have been so surprising I suppose. The Third Man, in a way, is quite comical, but I keep forgetting it was written by Graham Greene. I think the last of his books I read were 'The Lawless Roads' and 'The Power and the Glory' so tortured religious types were more what I had in mind. I'm writing this now (catch up) on a bus from Tallinn to Riga. When I read about the book afterwards I saw that the original story was meant to be set in Tallinn before the world war. I'd be interested in seeing that version! It would have been a quite different setting in any case. I want to see the film soon. Apparently it was filmed during the early stages of Castro and it was allowed because of the negative view of the Batista regime. But at the end of the day it's a good story told well. You'd wonder how many similar situations there have been over the years.

One thing that finally persuaded me to read this was that I had finished reading Enduring Cuba by Zoe Bran. It is first and foremost a travelogue. I think I was expecting something else, maybe a book written by somebody who had lived among Cubans for a longer period. Zoe travelled around Cuba for about 2 months and while she has a much more thorough visit than most, it is still just a snapshot. But once I got used to this I enjoyed it. I've never been to Cuba and I would like to, but not on a package tour. I think it's off my list of honeymoon destinations though (well was never seriously on...). Zoe did mention Colin Thubron at some stage though, and I do think his travel books are a level above.

cailinoBAC · 20-11-2011 2:05pm

Just finished 'The Lake Shore Limited' by Sue Miller. Well I raced through the last half just because I hate leaving books unfinished and when I'd read the first 100 pages or so I realised I just did not particularly care about the book or any of the characters and at no stage did my mind change about this over the course of the next half.

Ok, haven't updated this for a while though I've been reading loads....Hmmm

'The Leopard' by Jo Nesbo. Did what it said on the tin. I'll probably keep reading these books as they come out, even if they are very formulaic and with each book the author tries (and succeeds) to find more gruesome ways of killing people.

Bobby Fischer goes to War by David Edmonds & John Eidinow
Even though I have never played a game of chess in my life for some reason I love reading books about chess, both fiction and non fiction. Also, since I took part in the musical 'Chess' a few years ago I found this story quite fascinating.

Kamchatka by Marcel Figueras
This was one of those books that I started and it didn't grab me straight away. I mean I did like what I read, but when I put the book down I picked up something else. Then I returned to it and slowly got sucked in. Kamchatka is a faraway province in Russia, but in the book it's a country on risk. It's not giving anything away to say that the father becomes one of the disappeared in Argentina, because we are told about this at the very beginning, then we work back through 'Harry's memories right up to the beginning again. And at that stage I cared. I was reading it on a plane and coming to the ending I couldn't believe how much I was crying, it had been a while since a book had done that to me.

The Pages in Between by Erin Einhorn
I picked this up in a second hand shop in Riga and when I reread the cover I wondered why. It seemed really twee, an American Jew goes to Poland to find the family who had looked after her mother who was born during the war. I was surprised at how well written it was, and especially at how honest it was. The author didn't sugarcoat anything, her actions, her relationship with her mother, the reunion with the Polish family, the attitudes of her own family to the Poles. I was quite a fascinating story and you can understand why she would try to unravel it all, whereas her mother, who had lived through it and claimed not to remember anything, just wanted to sweep it under the carpet.

cailinoBAC · 20-11-2011 2:25pm

'The Best of Everything' by Rona Jaffe
Perhaps subconsciously I bought this bssed on the 'as seen on Mad Men' sticker, but I don't remember that. I was reading it and started thinking 'oh this is very Mad Men-esque' and then I noticed it. Well, it is. It was a decent read - apparently it caused a scandal at the time but really it's just a precursor to today's chicklit. I never heard of the author before and I suppose the book had disappeared until the 'as featured on Mad Men' meant it could be reissued as a tie in.

'All Summer' by Claire Kilroy
This was an interesting read, but I can't say that I really liked it. It was definitely well written, but that's not enough on its own. I didn't have much sympathy for any of the characters. I found it interesting how she avoided mentioning the city though it was obviously Dublin.

'One Red Paperclip' by Kyle MacDonald
I remember reading about this in the metro a few years back and had seen the book but wasn't interested in buying it. When I saw it on a hotel shelf I decided it would be a nice easy read. Which it was. Something to pass the time but disposable. Very quickly I decided to ignore the moralising at the end of each chapter as it just did not interest me. Also I just wanted to read the story and how it unfolded, not lessons he thought could be applied to my life. As I said, it passed the time but I'm not sure the guy has done much since apart from some public speaking. I'm not sure if he ended up living in 'the house', I really doubt it.

'Sarah's Key' by Tatiana de Rosnay
As with Snowleg, this was a superior pageturner that depends a lot on coincidence. I suppose all great stories are based somewhat on coincidence, it's just nice when it's a little less signposted. The film has not got fantastic reviews but would still be interested in watching it. The story is based on a round up of the Jews in Paris during WWII, not by the Nazis but by the French Police. Unlike the protagonist I am not ashamed that I did not know of this, as there have been so many atrocities in the course of history and it is impossible to know of them all. However I do think it is importang for the French to know of it. I don't think it is wise to whitewash history (in any country) and attribute full blame only to the other guys.

cailinoBAC · 20-11-2011 4:12pm

I suppose updating my reading log is as good as any a way to spend a rainy day in Spain

I was happy to see another book by Jeffrey Eugenides as I had loved Middlesex. 'The Marriage Plot' is not up there with Middlesex (not that everybody loved that as much as me) but it gets under your skin. It is a very conventional style book and seems to hark back to many of the 'marriage plot' books it references. Probably as was intended, I found myself rooting for one of the suitors over the other and initially was disappointed with the ending. But the more I thought about it, the more appropriate and truthful it seemed. I'll probably end up reading this again.

'The Joy Luck Club'by Amy Tan
I think it was n some thread here that I read about a 'big reveal' in this book. I'm both happy and unhappy because I'd read a few pages but my interest hadn't been piqued. I went back and picked it up, however maybe I kept reading towards this big reveal rather than just sitting back and enjoying it. In a way it like reading an interlinked set of short stories. Each had a beginning and and end, though of course the end of A story is not the end of THE story. It definitely tugged at the heartstrings...the clash of cultures...how daughters assume their mothers don't understand...how misunderstandings, which always exist, are heightened by the culture clash...

'The Rainbow and the Rose' by Nevil Shute
I like Nevil Shute. Is that a bad thing to say? Nobody seems to read his books any more, except 'A Town like Alice'. I suppose he was terribly old fashioned and reading his books nowadays, they don't exactly pass the political correctness test. But he had some great stories. And sometimes the greatest were the simplest. This is about the life story of a pilot living in Australia, in particular a much earlier love he had for a married woman. If this book was written nowadays, even set during the same time, the story would have gone a different way. The 'love' would have been 'stronger than all society's constraints'. Love stories in Nevil Shute are rarely straightforward, but also there are other stories on the periphery, of which we are told little, but which could be great stories in themselves.

cailinoBAC · 14-11-2012 10:26pm

Haven't updated in a while....
Anyway, I picked up 'The Language of Flowers' by Vanessa Diffenbaugh recently and I really enjoyed it. At the same time, I found when I was reading it that I was more interested in the modern day story and I got annoyed every time it switched back to 'before'. When I finished it I started it again, skipping all of those chapters and enjoyed it a lot more!

cailinoBAC · 15-12-2013 10:03pm

So I didn't really keep this up for very long. I've just started a blog about reading the unread books that have been languishing on my bookshelf (well the first ones I've read haven't but that's the intention), so I'll see how long I manage to keep that up.
http://theunreadbookshelf.wordpress.com/