pamelad's books off the shelf 2016

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pamelad's books off the shelf 2016

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1pamelad
Editado: Jun 13, 2016, 1:08 am

I've been missing in action since 2012. Time slips away! In 2013 I moved house, so I sold or gave away some of the books I thought I'd never read. Now I'm making my way through the remaining 60. So far this year I've read four from the shelf: Quicksand by Junichuro Taniziki; Proust's Overcoat by Lorenza Foschini; One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzheitsyn; Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal.

I'm currently reading The Pea-pickers by Eve Langley.

Setting a goal of twelve books that were on the shelf before January 1st.

Now up to 6.

2pamelad
Maio 30, 2016, 4:04 am

Finished The Pea-pickers, a minor Australian classic that has been on my shelves since 2009.

3rocketjk
Jun 2, 2016, 5:11 pm

Welcome back! I loved Hrabel's I Served the King of England when I read it several years ago. Seems like there's a lot of Czech literature that resonates with me.

4pamelad
Jun 13, 2016, 12:58 am

The Sound of the Mountain by Yasunari Kawabata

Ogata Shingo is ageing. He is becoming forgetful, his hair is turning white by the day, his contemporaries are dieing, and his nightly dreams invade his days. He catches the train each day to an office where his son Shuichi also works. Shuichi is having an affair with a war-widow, despite being newly married, and Shingo is worried for his daughter-in-law.

This is a sad and gentle story, a compelling look at a Japanese family in the years just after WWII. Japanese society is changing. With the deaths of so many men, women can choose not to submit to the control of a husband or father, and can live independently. Even so, Shingo's divorced daughter, Fusako, returns to live with her father. Her husband's family could have demanded that her children live with them. Should Fusako remarry, the head of her family, her father or eventually her brother, is responsible for her children and if she chose to remarry she could leave her children with her brother and his wife. Abortion is legal, and freely available. The calendar is new, and even people's official ages have changed.

Suicide is accepted as an honourable way to end one's life, and some of the characters in the novel contemplate death by suicide, as in another Japanese book I read earlier this year, Junichiro Tanazaki's Quicksand. Wives die with their husbands, and Shingo, after reading of a couple's suicide, discusses with his wife whether both the husband and wife should leave a note, or just the husband.

I've mentioned a few snippets that fascinated me, perhaps not the best way to approach a book like this one, which is a minutely observed, beautifully written work of art.

Highly recommended.

>3 rocketjk: I also read a lot of Czech literature and am a fan of Josef Skvorecky and Ivan Klima.

5rocketjk
Jun 13, 2016, 1:22 pm

>4 pamelad: Yes, Skvorecky is marvelous. I was introduced to him via The Bass Saxophone in grad school.

6pamelad
Set 11, 2016, 6:27 pm

Nothing by Henry Green

John Pomfret and Jane Weatherby were once lovers and, now that their spouses are dead, Jane wants to marry John. She is a monstrously selfish and manipulative woman, who schemes to overcome the obstacles of an engagement between her own son, Philip, and Pomfret's daughter, Mary; John's affair with Liz; and her own affair with Richard. Most of the story is told in conversations between pairs of protagonists and is dry, witty and believable, with multiple interpretations of the same observations, depending on the points of view of the characters.

Green's imagery is often original and striking . This is a sophisticated, intelligent, beautifully written book about unpleasant, superficial people. I enjoyed it.

7pamelad
Set 29, 2016, 2:36 am

The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino

It took me a while to get into this because of the clumsy translation, but the story is so good that I got caught up in it. Yasuko Hanaoka thought she had escaped her violent ex-husband, Togashi, but he turned up at her flat making threats and demanding money. When Togashi is killed, the brilliant mathematician in the adjacent flat, who is secretly devoted to Yasuko, concocts the perfect alibi. Kusanagi, the head of the police investigation, suspects Hanaoka, but can find no evidence against her. He is no match for the mathematical genius, Ishigami, but Kusanagi's friend, the physicist Yukawa, is Ishigawa's equal. Will Yukawa crack the alibi? Does he want to?

This was a best-seller in Japan and I can see why. Recommended.

8pamelad
Set 29, 2016, 2:41 am

That was number 8. I'm currently reading The Child by Jules Valles which will make 9, so the goal of 12 is in sight.

9pamelad
Out 8, 2016, 6:29 pm

Number 9.

The Child by Jules Vallès

The Child was first published in France in 1879, but was not until 2005 that the first English translation appeared. Vallès dedicated this autobiographical novel to all those who were bored stiff at school or reduced to tears at home, who in childhood were bullied by their teachers or thrashed by their parents, people like himself and his alter ego Jacques Vingtras. Every day Jacques was beaten by his mother, for trivial infractions or for nothing at all, because she believed the adage spare the rod, spoil the child. His father, an under-qualified school teacher who was demeaned by the insults and mockery he put up with, and the grovelling he had to do, to keep his insecure job, beat Jacques less often, but more violently. It was a parent's right to treat his children as he saw fit, and some of Jacques' friends suffered beatings even worse than he did.

The Vingtras parents both came from peasant families, so by becoming a schoolteacher, M. Vingtras had risen well above his station. His aim in life was to rise higher, and he wanted his son to become a classical scholar and eventually a teacher. Jacques, however, wanted to be a tradesman, perhaps a cobbler like the happy men downstairs, or a farmer like his jovial and generous relatives. The miserly Mme. Vingtras was less successful than her husband in hiding her peasant background, and created public tantrums that embarrassed her son and made her husband's position even more insecure. Jacques, a clever and amenable boy, does his best to respect his parents' rules, and tries to meet their expectations, but he is clumsy, thoughtless and often in trouble. His father's colleagues show their disdain for the family's poverty and peasant background by victimising Jacques.

Jacques is a resilient boy, a pragmatist who is not defeated by the misery his parents and teachers subject him to, but looks forward to the time he will be independent. Perhaps he will run away to sea, establish a colony and become rich; he has no intention of following his father's plans. His observations of his parents and teachers are scathing, accurate and funny.

The Child is a witty, entertaining, thought-provoking book. Highly recommended.