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Cheryl's books

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The Collected Stories
John McGahern
Middlemarch
George Eliot
Omensetter's Luck
William H. Gass
Swann's Way
Marcel Proust, Lydia Davis
A Naked Singularity (Paper)
Sergio de la Pava
The Master and Margarita
Mikhail Bulgakov, Richard Pevear, Larissa Volokhonsky
Otherwise Known as the Human Condition: Selected Essays and Reviews
Geoff Dyer
Infinite Jest
David Foster Wallace
Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self
Claire Tomalin
Maps and Legends
Michael Chabon
Mount Pleasant - Don Gillmor A zippy read (therefore a good Booker contender according to Stella's jury from a couple of years ago). Funny too, with some good zinger lines. The story was pepped up with a world-weary cynicism. I hugely enjoyed the funny and withering character details and observations of relationships -- they reminded me of Margaret Atwood, and that combined with the subject matter of overwhelming family debt, made me wonder if Atwood's book [b:Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth|3428252|Payback Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth|Margaret Atwood|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1328772265s/3428252.jpg|3469132] played any role in the genesis of the idea for the book. I think older readers will appreciate it more -- the anxieties are of the later middle-aged. The younger ones aren't thinking of this stuff yet
There's added resonance for those readers familiar with Toronto.

The Orphan Master's Son - Adam Johnson “And don’t forget citizens: the ban on stargazing is still in effect.”

In the powerful non-fiction book [b:Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea|6178648|Nothing to Envy Ordinary Lives in North Korea|Barbara Demick|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1320449375s/6178648.jpg|6358552], a satellite photo shows South Korea heavily lit up, but North Korea in almost complete blackness.
A scene in this book is a riff on that photo, as imagined by a North Korean: “The American citizen, however, is wide awake. You should see a satellite photo of that confused nation at night—it’s one grand swath of light, glaring with the sum of their idle, indolent evenings. Lazy and unmotivated, Americans stay up late, engaging in television, homosexuality, and even religion, anything to fill their selfish appetites.”

The terrifying fear of the government dictated how lives were lived, yet the absolute rule meant that they knew only a life under the Dear Leader, and didn’t know that other possibilities existed. This book is the fictional counterpart to “Nothing to Envy”, and imagines some of the weird world inhabited by the minions of Kim Jong Il.

The course of Jun Do’s life seems arbitrary, subject only to the bizarre and often cruel whims of those who lord power over him. For a few years, he works as a kidnapper for the Korean government (well, everyone is working for the government. The Leader is their Father. They are working for the Glory of their country.) He is part of a team that trawls the coast of Japan, snatching unwary people off beaches and piers, and spiriting them to Korea. It is so bizarre, yet this is actually based on fact. There was a period of a few years in the 90s when this happened.
Their navy base houses missiles which apparently get better treatment than the soldiers: “There was no doctor. The infirmary was just a place where sick soldiers were housed until it was clear they wouldn’t recover. If the young soldier hadn’t improved by morning, the MPs would hook up a blood line and drain four units from him. Jun Do had seen it before, and as far as he could tell, it was the best way to go. It only took a couple of minutes—first they got sleepy, then a little dreamy looking, and if there was a last little panic at the end, it didn’t matter because they couldn’t talk anymore, and finally, before lights out, they looked pleasantly confused, like a cricket with its feelers pulled off.”

In one phase, he somehow ends up being a translator for a small governmental envoy that travels to Texas. They are hosted by a powerful senator who is determined to show them good ole American hospitality. It is here that Jun Do begins to understand his own oppression. “When the dogs returned, the Senator gave them treats from his pocket, and Jun Do understood that in communism, you’d threaten a dog into compliance, while in capitalism, obedience is obtained through bribes.”

The cruelty of the regime is unimaginable. To survive means to become part of the regime, and to conform. Jun Do works for a while in a prison camp -- the inmates are photographed on entry, and photographed again in the act of dying as their blood is drained into bags.

Some horrors are likely culture-based. They do not regard dogs as pets, they are just another animal. “A group of stage mothers from the Children’s Palace Theater was enlisted to make the gift baskets. While calfskin could not be found for the making of gloves, the most supple replacement—puppy—was chosen.” This wouldn’t have seemed so repugnant if the word ‘kidskin’ instead of ‘puppy’ was used.

These horrors are described secondarily, to provide context for the story, which is about a boy who becomes a man, and eventually decides he will create choice, and find his way to his love.

Jun Do gets the chance to choose one DVD to take back with him to North Korea. It is “Casablanca”. Later sequences in the book are like distorted surreal scenes from Casablanca. Claude Rains says “Round up the usual suspects." The Korean says, “Detain all the citizens, confirm their IDs.” Of course, we can’t help but think, “We’ll always have Paris…” and wonder if that's how it will turn out.
The Round House - Louise Erdrich Coming-of-age story as marked by welcome-to-the-real-world-it-sucks experiences of 13 yr old boy and wise and noble parents (lawyer/judge), racial tensions, interracial rape, law vs justice, childhood vs adulthood.

Comparisons with To Kill a Mockingbird books of the Miramichi in New Brunswick.
A Heart So White (Penguin Modern Classics) - Javier Marías, Jonathan Coe “I did not want to know but I have since come to know that one of the girls, when she wasn’t a girl any more and hadn’t long been back from her honeymoon, went into the bathroom, stood in front of the mirror, unbuttoned her blouse, took off her bra and aimed her own father’s gun at her heart, her father at the time was in the living room with other members of the family and three guests.”

And so with the first sentence we dive into unknown depths.

The title of the book is from Macbeth, in the scene in which Macbeth returns to his wife, after killing Duncan (‘the deed is done’). This is the kernel of the book, the wellspring. “Listening is the most dangerous thing of all, listening means knowing, finding out about something and knowing what’s going on, our ears don’t have lids that can instinctively close against the words uttered, they can’t hide from what they sense they’re about to hear, it’s always too late. It isn’t just that Lady Macbeth persuades Macbeth, it’s above all that she’s aware that he’s committed a murder from the moment he has done so, she’s heard from her husband’s own lips, on his return: “I have done the deed.” … she returned having smeared the faces of the servants with the blood of the dead man ("If he do bleed ...") to make them seem the guilty parties: "My hands are of your colour," she says to Macbeth, "but I shame to wear a heart so white," as if she wished to infect him with her own nonchalance in exchange for infecting herself with the bloodshed by Duncan, unless "white" here means "pale and fearful" or "cowardly"."

I compare reading Marias to floating in the water. To fall back on the water, to feel it pressing on the back, on the shoulders, like a hand on the shoulder, it supports us, it holds us up and calms us. To concentrate on not concentrating, so that the immersion carries you along at the same level, unvarying, familiar and new, blindly but inexorably toward knowing, yet knowing that if you stop concentrating you will shift focus and then lose your way so then you have to concentrate again on concentrating to regain your position, to feel it again pressing on your back, supporting you, calming you, like a hand on the shoulder.

On this, my second Marias novel, I was prepared to be immersed, to search for the right plane, and to listen for the reverberations. “It's always the chest of the other person we lean back against for support, we only really feel supported or backed up when, as the latter verb itself indicates, there's someone behind us, someone we perhaps cannot even see and who covers our back with their chest, so close it almost brushes our back and in the end always does, and at times, that someone places a hand on our shoulder, a hand to calm us and also to hold us.” This was a common repetition, a variation, that appeared throughout the novel in similar but slightly different ways each time. The “hand on the shoulder” became the defining image, always with the same significance of reassurance, of calming, of support. But the narrator’s father Ranz (the husband of the suicidal woman in the opening paragraph) never feels that hand on his shoulder. Instead, there are a few times where he puts his coat on his shoulder, never putting his arms in the sleeves, the narrator takes pains to explain this is how he usually wears the coat. He must cover his own shoulder, from the back, he is alone, no one is covering his back. The “hand on the shoulder”… it recurs extensively throughout the story, provoking recognition and heightened alertness each time I came across the action.

The rhythm of the reading differs from conventional novels in that it is mostly told tightly in two planes. One is a brief narrative descriptive type, still usually formed by looping, tumbling sequences, and then the other is the longer reflective echoing musings, which repeat throughout the book, varying slightly in their telling, but cross referencing backward and forward, and these become gradually longer and more insistent until they merge with and become the dominant narrative. It is about listening, secrets, obligations, suspicions, telling stories, concealing stories. Stay in the plane, just at that plane, retain your focus, and it is like being showered in puzzle pieces that somehow fall into place all around you.
Life After Life - Kate Atkinson Ursula lived many lives. The first time, she died as she was being born, strangled by the cord around her neck. The snowstorm prevented the doctor from arriving in time.
“No breath. All the world come down to this. One breath.
Little lungs, like dragonfly wings failing to inflate in the foreign atmosphere. No wind in the strangled pipe. The buzzing of a thousand bees in the tiny curled pearl of an ear.
Panic. The drowning girl, the falling bird.”
In the next chapter, Ursula is born again, but the doctor managed to arrive before the storm closed the roads. The baby survives. “She observed the turn of seasons for the first time. She was born with winter already in her bones, but then came the sharp promise of spring, the fattening of the buds, the indolent heat of summer, the mould and mushroom of autumn.”

Ursula is born in 1910. We already know that ahead of her are two world wars, the deadly Spanish Flu epidemic, as well as the potential calamities that may befall anyone, any time.
Just a beat of the butterfly’s wings and all may change.
She keeps being born and living longer, although not necessarily longer than the last time. Unlike the movie Groundhog Day, she doesn’t explicitly remember past events of the other existences. But deja vu is a sixth sense for her: “And sometimes, too, she knew what someone was about to say before they said or what mundane incident was about to occur.”
“Words and phrases echoed themselves, strangers seemed like old acquaintances.”

When she arrives at a point in her life where she had previously died, she feels ‘an imminence’, a shadow. “And the terrible fear — fearful terror — that she carried around inside her.” She gradually comes to realise that she has to do something to change the unknown but imminent event.
Life is a series of choices. Some choices at the time and up close seem inconsequential and minor, but each choice takes one along one path and not the other. Sometimes you can only recognise the really significant fork when it’s behind you, and you are now too far away to tread that path. “She no longer recognized herself, she thought. She had taken the wrong path, opened the wrong door, and was unable to find her way back.”

The story is like the tides of the sea. Like waves. The story comes in to shore, recedes, comes back in again but closer, then recedes. Each time the same but with a bit different shape, a bit further in, and always marking the passage of time.
Beautiful prose, wonderfully inventive plot line, and rich imagery -- this is her best work yet.
The Dinner - Herman Koch, Sam Garrett This was not like Gone Girl, despite the blurb. Gone Girl was fun, with hairpin twists and turns to the plot. This was not fun. This was just nasty.
Like Gone Girl, this too has unreliable narrator, and characters making sharp bitchy observations.
Their children are the spawns of Satan, and it's like reading about demons in a boardroom questioning the moralities and ethics about life and child-rearing. WTF?
The writing was good, the tension nicely paced -- it was a page turner alright. But it was ultimately unsatisfying--the violence was not sufficiently redeemed.
Y - Marjorie Celona A baby is abandoned at the Y. Why? Why do people choose the forks in the path that they do? People are so often incapable of recognising choices. They lack a perceptual awareness of their own abilities to influence their own course through their life. The novel follows the story of the abandoned baby and her childhood, and intersperses it with the story of her biological parents. The paths of the characters are littered with misery and bad choices. The bleakness is alleviated only a little by the naive hopes of the child.
The characters were sketched in bold strong strokes, but didn't feel filled in. The use of the city as a character itself helped compensate for this. The rich imageries of the various neighbourhoods of Victoria were replete with details that provided strong contexts for the story lines. I enjoyed this the most. As she walked her characters along Dallas Rd at the ocean front, past the World's Tallest Totem, and over to Ogden Point where the cruise ships berth, I saw it readily in my mind. The down and outs of Pandora Ave and other marginal areas dominated the book. The rural areas out west, beside a provincial park, also played true to form, harboring an eclectic mix of reclusive people who seek refuge in the environment of towering trees "forming a nave", like a church, or an Emily Carr painting, as noted by one of the characters.
photo yblueskyemilycarr_zps669515d1.jpg
Divergent - Veronica Roth My 12 y.o. daughter is discovering dystopian fiction, and this is her favourite book, EVER! Even better than the [b:The Hunger Games|2767052|The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games #1)|Suzanne Collins|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1358275334s/2767052.jpg|2792775], she says. You just have to read this, mom! (In about four years from now, I'm going to introduce her to a whole other level of dystopian fiction and give her Atwood's [b:The Handmaid's Tale|38447|The Handmaid's Tale|Margaret Atwood|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1294702760s/38447.jpg|1119185].)
This is perfectly and most squarely aimed at teenagers/YA. What better audience for a book about a society that is divided into like groups based on common traits? (It's kind of like the stratification that is happening in middle school). They adhere to strict societal controls based on their faction (those of Abnegation wear gray and try to be inconspicuous in all they say and do, and are excellent leaders because they are selfless, etc), and their coming-of-age means they have to choose which faction they will henceforth belong to. They must choose their identity, their grown-up self. They have to choose what kind of person they will be. And in the process they will learn about the complexities of human nature.
The book is strong in these themes of identity, the roles of citizens and society, and it also touches lightly on awakening romantic interests. The choices are strongly polarised, black and white, fitting in well with the strong sense of justice that this age group is developing. Wrap it up with some cartoonish smack-em-down violence, some teenage rebellion and revolution, and the ending is then set up nicely for #2 [b:Insurgent|11735983|Insurgent (Divergent, #2)|Veronica Roth|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1325667729s/11735983.jpg|15524542].
February - Lisa Moore This book languished in a stack on a to-be-read shelf for almost two years, squashed between a Julian Barnes below and some short story anthology above.
It was 31 years ago on Valentine's Day that the Ocean Ranger oil rig sank off the coast of Newfoundland, killing all aboard.
31 years later, on Valentine's Day yesterday, February won the Canada Reads award. (Oh crap, now the masses will like it, it will be popular, and more often than not that means the writing sucks, but jeez, it's Lisa Moore, she's a good writer. She has cred!) I kept putting it off, fearing the mawkishness that was sure to fill the pages of a book about a widow of one of the dead crewmen. But that's not how it turned out. This isn't about wallowing in grief and outrage. It rises above that. The narrative skips around in time, both directly and indirectly as memories and dreams. This seems ideal for this type of story, because the present is so pregnant with the past. Very slowly the widow Helen begins to weave the future into her existence.
The structure, the architecture were great, but what I enjoyed the most was Moore's expressive prose. The effortless hyper-realism of her descriptions brought it to life, and overarching it all were quiet wisdoms and simple but profound insights. Lovely.

The Polysyllabic Spree - Nick Hornby Nick Hornby begins his book with the month of Sept 2003, listing on the left the 10 books he acquired that month (a few Salingers, a couple of biographies, some poetry), and the 4 books he read that month (the Salingers and one from a TBR pile).
And then he tells us, "So this is supposed to about the how, and when, and why, and what of reading--about the way that, when reading is going well, one book leads to another and to another, a paper trail of theme and meaning; and how, when it's going badly, when books don't stick or take, when your mood and the mood of the book are fighting like cats, you'd rather do anything but attempt the next paragraph, or reread the last one for the tenth time."
Well, this kind of book is tailor-made for Goodreads fans. In a way, Goodreads is a polysyllabic spree too.

"All the books we own, both read and unread, are the fullest expression of self we have at our disposal…But with each passing year, and with each whimsical purchase, our libraries become more and more able to articulate who we are, whether we read the books or not.”
I would add that not only do our libraries articulate who we are, they also articulate who we want to be.

On quoting Gabriel Zaid, “the truly cultured are capable of owning thousands of unread books without losing their composure or their desire for more.” , he enthuses "That’s me! And you, probably! That’s us!"
Yes! it is me! Hi! (nerdy Horshack wave) Thanks for giving me again even more titles for my TBR pile, Nick! ( [b:So Many Books: Reading and Publishing in an Age of Abundance|282626|So Many Books Reading and Publishing in an Age of Abundance|Gabriel Zaid|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1328757249s/282626.jpg|114378] )

This inaugural volume is the second one I've read in this series (the first was the last one of the series, [b:More Baths, Less Talking|13544149|More Baths, Less Talking|Nick Hornby|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1342858311s/13544149.jpg|19109113]) and it's just as good.
Two Pints - Roddy Doyle Fuckin' brilliant.

This hilarious slim book started life as a series of Facebook posts. Doyle wanted to figure out how to use FB so he played around with creating posts as if they were daily conversations between a couple of buddies in a pub.
The book is written entirely as dialogue. It's coarse, it's rude, it's LOL funny.
Bracing and invigorating.

************************************************
(On his grandson learning poetry)
“An’ he asks me to, yeh know, look at the poem. So I get the oven gloves on an’ I give it a dekko. ‘The Road Not Taken’ – some bollix called Robert Frost. Have yeh read it, yourself?
— I won’t even say no.
— Two roads diverged in a yellow wood. Stay where yeh are; I’m just givin’ yeh a flavour o’ the thing.
— And – wha’?
— Well, this cunt – Robert Frost, like – he’s makin’ his mind up abou’ which road to take an’ he knows he’ll regret not takin’ one o’ them. An’ that’s basically it.
— He doesn’t need a fuckin’ poem for tha’. That’s life. It’s common fuckin’ sense.
— Exactly. I go for the cod, I regret the burger.
— I married the woman but I wish I could be married to her sister.
— Is tha’ true?
— Not really – no.
— Annyway. Yeh sure?
— Go on.
— So annyway, the poor little bollix – Damien, like – the grandson. He has to answer questions about it. An’ the last one – it’s really stupid now. What road do you think you should never take? An’, like, I tell him, The road to Limerick.
— Did he write tha’?
— He fuckin’ did. “An’ guess where the fuckin’ teacher comes from? An’ guess who’s been called up to the fuckin’ school, to explain himself to the fuckin’ headmaster?
— Brilliant.
— Tomorrow mornin’.
— Serves yeh righ’ for readin’ poetry.”

Excerpt From: Doyle, Roddy. “Two Pints: A Collection.”

Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont - Elizabeth Taylor, Paul Bailey This was a lovely story, beautifully constructed and self-contained. It would be a great play. It is a touching and thoughtful look at aging, loneliness, and community, with a colourful cast of often sharp-tongued characters.
A bit of trivia: p71, the mother of Mrs Palfrey's friend says "But every great actor started that way. I'm sure Sir Laurence did his stint." The real-life widow of Sir Laurence, Joan Plowright, plays Mrs Palfrey in the movie.

Four New Messages - Joshua Cohen I was lured to this by James Wood, who included this in the New Yorker top 2012 books.
The first story "Emissions" made me feel old and cranky. Sex, drugs, computer hacking -- sigh. So much energy. But so unpredictable. Great ending.
The second one, "McDonald's" is so intricately metafictional that it became a confusing morass of embryonic concepts. Some bits here and there are terrific, but overall, I want to shake him: "Just say it!"
"The Bed", being the first part of "Sent", was wonderful - almost a fairy tale of the life of a wooden bed as it lived through generations. But then the rest of it abruptly yanks you into something else and disintegrates into surrealistic bizarre fragmented scenes of Eastern European porn industry. WTF?
What is it when a preoccupation with sexual themes so surely marks the writer as male and young-ish?
Cohen is an acrobat of words and ideas. This will appeal to lovers of absurdist metafiction on steroids, but I think it still needs some maturation and refining.
We Learn Nothing: Essays and Cartoons - Tim Kreider "Fourteen years ago, I was stabbed in the throat. This is kind of a long story and less interesting than it sounds....After my unsuccessful murder I wasn't unhappy for an entire year."
This first essay, Reprieve, is a short reflection on how his outlook on life changed afterward. His first year was a feeling of euphoric escape from death, but this becomes submerged by the everydayness of life. That one was my favourite.
Family relationships, friendships with current friends, defriended friends, lost friends, a transgendered friend are examined closely and at times with painful honesty. Others are more political. In "When They're Not Assholes" he tries to counter his instinctive acerbic dislike of the Tea Partiers by deciding to 'just listen'. But "What dooms our best efforts to cultivate empathy and compassion is always, of course, other people." Oh yes, exactly!
These are funny and often touching stories -- I think that his intelligent humour is what helps him to learn everything, including that sometimes he learns nothing.
My Father Like a River - Ron Rash This ebook from the library is just two short stories. It turns out to be sort of a mini-advance copy in advance of his new collection coming out in a couple of weeks. Both were excellent stories. Like previous works, he channels the poor, the marginated and the disenfranchised with unsentimental sympathy. I'm looking forward to the real book.
Oil on Water: A Novel - Helon Habila The opening chapter describes a harrowing river journey that immediately brings to mind Heart of Darkness. It is not the same story, but the physical surroundings, the fog, the fearful emotional atmosphere...I'm thinking, "Mistah Kurtz, he dead." It was a strong powerful chapter.
The story is of an ambitious Nigerian reporter who is trying to find the kidnapped wife of an expatriate European oil executive. Nothing is as it seems, and the plot moves slowly, somewhat weighed down by the earnestness of the narrator. There are a number of potentially fascinating characters, but they lack definition; they all tend to sound the same. Much of the prose is irrelevant and plodding: "She was pretty and clever and the sex was good, but I didn't see myself spending the rest of my life with her."
Greed is destroying the society and environment of Nigeria -- the greed of the oil industry, the greed of the world that demands the oil, and the greed of the Nigerians. But the ones with the most money wield the power, so the Nigerians are suffering for that. The story was a way to highlight the inequities and cruelties. I liked that this is a book written by a Nigerian, with Nigerian protagonists.