Summer Reads #2 – The Sandman Saga by Neil Gaiman

Tags

american gods, book review, books, christianity, comic books, coraline, god of dreams, greek mythology, literature, mirrormask, moirai, morpheus, mythology, Neil Gaiman, ramadan, Reading, religion, stardust, the kindly ones, The Sandman, the three fates, Vertigo Jam

According to Neil Gaiman, if the Moirai (the Three Fates) lived among us, they would be harmless old cat ladies with a penchant for yarn-bombing.

 

This year I managed to complete the Sandman Saga, which was a big one for me, because after reading a lot of Neil Gaiman, I was still undecided on how I felt about him and his writing.

He’s one of these authors who is gifted and has a prolific output of work – the man can turn his hand to anything literary and make a success of it. The Sandman comics have also long been touted as his magnum opus, but I just didn’t have the time to get through it due to work commitments.

But 2018 was the year for it, and I’m sooooo glad I got through this, because it was AMAZING! Neil Gaiman is everything they say he is – an absolute genius.

If like me, you weren’t that particularly impressed with Coraline, Mirrormask, Stardust or found American Gods to be too steep and cryptic in terms of plot and character development, then The Sandman Saga is definitely for you.

In my humble opinion, this has to be Gaiman’s biggest achievement. In it he display’s his amazing prowess and knowledge of world mythology; creates a world where all gods, of all races across all times exist in the here and now, some as faint echoes and others as living amongst us, unbeknownst to us. In a way, The Sandman is not just about the adventures of Morpheus the Dream-God (one of the Eternals); it is through his interactions with humans, his losses and gains, his victories and calamities that Gaiman puts together a meta-mythology, a place where all gods are a figment of human imagination and exist as long as we exist.

I love this idea – it’s fresh, new, and something that he goes into in great detail in American Gods where he explores how ancient gods gain new grounds through the diasporas of different peoples’ across the ages, and how genocides are enough to wipe out the existence of others. It is powerful in that it puts the existence of faith into the hands of story-telling. The gods travel and stay tethered to survival through our stories. According to Gaiman, without the tradition of oral story-telling, our gods would come to naught. Being a story-teller, I like this idea, a lot!

Thus I found Sandman to be a bibliophile’s delight, because Morpheus, the god of dreams is the ultimate storyteller. He controls the gateway to the subconscious, he is a merciful god to a certain extent, yet when the world of dreams is in flux (as it is when we are first introduced to him in Preludes and Nocturnes issue #1), it causes chaos in the human world.

The saga begins when a group of Occultists (among them, the infamous Aleister Crowley) gather to summon and entrap Death itself. Their little parlour game goes awry and instead of entrapping Death, they manage to snag Death’s twin brother, Dream. Morpheus, therefore begins his 70 year confinement at the hands of these occultists, which results in terrible consequences for people around the world. Some fall asleep never to wake up again, others die stark raving mad because of their inability to sleep, others are subjected to terrible nightmares that are endless. In short, the world is thrown into flux, but the Lord of Dreams finally finds a way to escape his fate as a ‘genie in the lamp’, and must begin a journey across space and time, and between worlds to claim back the power that was seized in his absence.

This is of course, just the beginning of the saga. So much more happens, and I can’t remember a time when I was so engrossed by mythology as I was with this series. It has made my understanding and appreciation of American Gods much more meaningful as I see now what Gaiman was trying to do.

The Sandman was him playing in the sand pit. He stated himself that the series made him grow as a writer as he became bolder with his world-building, and with those amazing connections he makes between character and the series.

My favourite issues comprise of the stand-alone Ramadan, which has a very 1001 nights flavour to it and the masterful way he put together The Kindly Ones, the penultimate volume to the saga, where he explores the potency of the female in mythology. The Kindly Ones as they are referred to, assume the avatar of the mother, the lover, the female scorned. The way he portrays the Three Fates and the alchemy of feminine ‘madness’ was especially breath-taking.

I’ve made up my mind: Neil Gaiman truly is one of a kind.

I can only hope to meet him in person one day and listen to his pearls of wisdom about writing.

NOTE: Special mention to the illustrator David McKean, whose illustrated the front covers for each volume. His style artfully illustrated the nightmare and the dreamscape of Morpheus’ world. But if you look carefully past the disturbing nature of his images, you will see a balance of symbolism, which like a dowling rod divines the very heart of each volume and issue. A wonderful collaboration.

 

 

 

Travels with a bookworm – Weird encounters at the airport…

Tags

Bookhaul, books, Donna Tartt, female authors, Gatwick, Humor, Italy, Laura Purcell, literature, Moon Tiger, Penelope Lively, Shopping, Summer Reads, The Secret History, The Silent Companions

The summer holidays have come around, and like most teachers I have aimed to get out of the country as soon as humanly possible. It’s been a grueling 10 months of secondary education – stressing over grades, dealing with poor behaviour, becoming a marking machine for the last two terms (firstly with an endless stream of year 11 PPEs followed by end of term Year 10 PPEs and assessments for other groups).

It’s fair to say 2017-18 academic year has been more hellish than normal – but that’s OK, as I’ve put 2’235 miles between me and London and am now happily sweltering in the dry, Mediterranean heat! As always, I aim to over-achieve my pledge of 52 books a year, but must admit that I’m only ahead because I’ve cheated with only reading comic books for the first half of the year! I’m a bit disappointed with myself really…

I can’t read as much as I could or would like to during term time, so the summer holidays for me is perfect for full-on literature immersion. Mind, body and soul I make a commitment to getting through as many titles as possible, making up for the rest of the year when my brain is so tired it can’t even deal with children’s fiction.

We arrived at Gatwick Airport respectably early, did our ‘liquids shop’ as it’s bloody impossible to take any shower gels or shampoos with you (unless you pay an exorbitant amount of money to Easyjet for hold luggage!) Once this was done, I called it ‘my time’. I dumped my stuff with whoever I was travelling with and half-ran, half-skipped to WHSmith’s (or even better) Waterstones.  Here, I allow myself one minute to just wonder-gaze at the spines of  books before I  tally up how many I’m getting – this is 5 weeks after all, a looooong time.

Then comes the choosing of the bloody things, and this time round I really struggled. I bloody hate fresh fiction – and I’m not good with snap decisions either. I usually wait for a siren call, a beckoning from the shelf, but Gate 111 awaits and my group have already started making their way over. I agonise over a plethora of things: ‘Is this intellectual? Will this stretch-and-challenge me? Do these books reflect the reading journey that I am on? Does the subject matter serve a purpose? Is this book too ‘simple’? Is it too ‘new’ and thus the praise for it from the New York Times too misleading? From me to you, never trust the New York Times!

I don’t know whether half of what I buy is spurred on by a sense of self-worth, genuine discernment of literature or pure vanity of ‘looky here at what I’m reading, aren’t I a clever cow!’ – however I walked away with three titles, all of which are female authors. To my horror, I discovered my reading diet had thus far consisted of white male authors, which I seek to rectify this year. I have a colleague to thank for that as he has also embarked on a similar journey.  But eventually I was able to make all three of my personalities happy, by opting for The Secret History by Donna Tartt, recommended to me by a dear colleague, The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell which is fairly new yet has a gothic twist (if the blurb is to be trusted), and the Booker Prize winning Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively, which sates the intellectual in me that craves for ‘literature of meaning’.

 

Time was ticking, and I was stuck behind three Italian ladies and a child trying to pay for some silly quitter strips with red buses on them and a couple of metallic pens with gold and silver crowns (c’mon! c’mon!) It didn’t help that the Jamaican lady behind the counter was also serving them begrudgingly – one of her idiosyncrasies of serving being the question: ‘Where are you flying today?’

Now normally there would be a speedy answer, money would change hands and off the customer would go. But there I am behind the Italian ladies who don’t know 5 words of English between them and do not understand what is being demanded of them. The Jamaican lady’s question, which at first appears to be a social filler, actually turned out to be a legitimate question. She genuinely wanted to know where each passenger was going. Absolutely insisted. How bizarre! At first the Italians looked at one another baffled, she demanded a second time to know where they were going, then a third, tone of voice hardening to a point akin to a Home Office interrogation. At this point the child sensed the tension in the air and began squirming. It was jarring – the ladies managed to stammer a response of ‘Italia’, hoping that would save them. However this didn’t quell her thirst for knowledge. The woman went full on MI5. ‘Are you travelling with this child? Is this child your child?’

The women were flustered like chickens who have had their hen-house disturbed. This isn’t customs – why can’t they just pay and walk away with their books? Why was the poor little bambino being pulled into all of this? Did they look like kidnappers?

At this point, I began to get irate as I’m in danger of not making it to the gate if it carries on in this vein – but eventually again the women manage to say the right thing and walk away quickly, glad to be released from the interrogation.

Relief turned to anxiety as now I realised it would be my turn. I hand over the books, quickly whip out the card ready to pay and leave as quickly as possible. But no… she wants to know where I am going too. Shit. I read her face – there is a ‘the shutters are down’ look to it and I realise maybe this idiosyncrasy has deeper roots. She certainly couldn’t read the body language and emotions of the Italian ladies, yet she insisted that her questions be answered, as if they were part of a cycle that helped her to get through one customer after another. A mechanical routine that helped her negotiate unexpected requests. Asperger’s maybe? Play along with it came the voice inside me. Indulge her.

So I went the opposite way – answered all her questions, made light conversation, watched her from behind the counter, and then realised with sadness the look in her eyes as I walked away with my book load. All she probably wants is to go away somewhere too – maybe asking where people are going to is a way of coping with a summer stuck serving customers at Gatwick. At that moment I tried putting myself in her shoes – all those people, jetting off to fabulous places, while you are stuck in an inbetween space, watching the world go by. Working in airports must be hell…

After a fleeting twinge of regret I exited WHSmith with a stoopid grin on my face, again half-skipping, half-running to my other fellow travelers, only to find that the gate closes in 10 minutes.

Shit! I’ve never been this late before – and I vowed I’d never do it again. Getting to Gate 111, as further insult to injury, turned out to be the mother of all journeys. Up and down a flight of stairs, escalators, you name it. I hate you Gatwick! Why can’t you be like Stansted?

Long story short I almost missed my bloody flight for the love of books, a strange Jamaican lady and some flustered Italian tourists. And all I wanted was some reads to tide me over for a couple of weeks till my next book haul…

HoL Book Club | Part 1 – My Musings, Just in time for World Book Day…

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book challenge, book club, ergodic literature, HoL, house of leaves, hypertext, japan, Jorge Luis Borges, mark z danielewski, readalong

It is March 1st – which means I get to mark World Book Day from a busy cafe in a shopping mall, after having travelled 40 minutes (there and back) to work only to find out it is a ‘snow day’ and therefore the site is shut.

I am currently drowning the last embers of my rage in my chai latte and top it off with a blueberry muffin, which quite frankly, I think I bloody well deserve after battling with Storm Emma’s offering on my car this morning. But hey-ho, can’t complain. I get to sit across the way from a Scouse handyman who is commiserating about his personal life to his mate and just eavesdrop (because that is what reader/writers do – we are very Parisian in that fashion).

This is the perfect time and place to write another blog post. Go me.

So, WBD is celebrated all day by reading books, talking about books, writing about books, and that is exactly what this is. MZD, the prodigal author of House of Leaves, began his online book club which looks at one section of this massive genre-defying tome at a time, and we all get to basically go nuts over inferring the shit out of it.

My observations so far of the group talk on the House of Leaves FB Book Club Page  is as follows:

• Every person has a different edition (full colour, black and white mostly) which means people are now sharing pictures of the inner sleeve that others do not have. There is a lot of camaraderie going on! And I have unearthed some pretty neat connections I never had the chance of learning about 10 years ago, because of the limitations on internet chat rooms and forums (remember those? Yeah, still miss ’em).
• It is all one MASSIVE GEEK PARTY! I mean, there is one lady who literally got paranoid over a splodge of blue ink on the title page (if you know the book, blue is a significant colour. All references to the HOUSE are in blue.) It was reading into stuff, gone mad. I have come to the conclusion that there is such a thing as too much interpretation, and that can ruin a beautiful thing like HoL. Turns out, MZD even gets exasperated at how deeply and seriously some people may lose themselves in HoL.
• The conversations are attracting not only the academically minded, but also complete newbies who are entering the horrific alchemy of the novel and realising that YES, this book CAN give you nightmares. A word of warning to those beginning it: make sure you read it during the day, not in your house, and you have someone around to have a light-hearted conversation afterwards. DO NOT READ AT NIGHT. You have been warned. I have personally experienced the horrors of that.
• It can be a bit confusing, but that is the nature of the novel and the way ideas unspool from it. When you have a piece of work that has been constructed like a daisy-chain from other pieces of literature and literature that doesn’t even exist, but is given the illusion it is a credible piece of evidence, then people begin to echo that in their own surmisings. It is completely a meta-experience. We are the book, the book is us. Simple as.

What ‘Genre’ is House of Leaves?

This is my second read through of HoL, which means I’ll be approaching it from a completely different perspective. When I first read it, I didn’t really get what I was experiencing. Yes, it was a very unique experience as the book is laid out differently from other texts. It is a story about a labyrinth, that grows in a house in Ash Tree Lane, and the text is labyrinthine to mimic that.

A labyrinth, as everyone knows, is designed to throw you off, make you lose your bearings, your sense of ‘self’, induce a sense of panic etc until you ‘work’ to find out the exit. This is what I mean by the ‘structure’ of the book mimicking the content of the book:

The text will not obey the laws of literature as we know it. Text will flow backwards, go sideways, be cut off, slide down the page, even be ‘caged’ in a box, which here is symbolising how one of the characters feels as he crawls through one of the ever shifting spaces in the labyrinth.

As for what ergodic means:

“The ergodic work of art is one that in a material sense includes the rules for its own use, a work that has certain requirements built in that automatically distinguishes between successful and unsuccessful users.”

It also needs to be something that requires the reader to interact with the text, (which the book club members are doing, they are digging up meanings, joining up the dots, making new connections and using the ‘interface’ that MZD created.) This book does not come with a manual on how to read it – you need to figure out what is needed to crack it:

“In ergodic literature, nontrivial effort is required to allow the reader to traverse the text. If ergodic literature is to make sense as a concept, there must also be nonergodic literature, where the effort to traverse the text is trivial, with no extranoematic responsibilities placed on the reader except (for example) eye movement and the periodic or arbitrary turning of pages.”

So basically moving your eyes from right to left is not going to get you anywhere with HoL.

Apart from this, HoL is grossly intertextual – to the point where we can say that it doesn’t stay anchored to any one ideology, theme or genre. It passes fluently and fluidly from one to the next at will. In fact, you have control over what those connections are. The suggestions are there, only you have to make the links (if you wish).

So, let’s introduce ourselves to the notion of HYPERTEXT:

Hypertext fiction is characterized by networked nodes of text making up a fictional story. There are often several options in each node that directs where the reader can go next. Unlike traditional fiction, the reader is not constrained by reading the fiction from start to end, depending on the choices they make. In this sense, it is similar to an encyclopaedia, with the reader reading a node and then choosing a link to follow.

HoL, despite proclaiming itself to be a ‘novel’ is actually more of a manual of sorts, an academic paper, that gets lost in the throes of its own urban mythology. It desperately tries to anchor itself in reality. We have at least 3 narrators for starters: Zampano (a blind man who to me resembles Jorges Luis Borges more than anything (more on this for next week!), Johnny Truant (a young drug-addled failing tattoo artist who picks up the mantle of Zampano after he dies, whose voice is a footnote in the margins of the book) and Navidson (a man who may or may not have existed, who moved into a haunted house, that grew a labyrinth one day that was physically impossible according to some shaky home videos). In fact, here is one person’s very useful diagram of how many ‘narrative layers’ one experiences when reading this book:

 

Can you say ‘unreliable narrator’? Um, yep. So paranoia when reading this novel is inevitable. The hypertext aspect of the book comes into play as you go deeper into the story. You will find yourself breaking off, going away and delving into the story of the Minotaur for a few days, coming back, then realising that the page you are reading has a secret code embedded in it. Off you go again, figuring out what it means, you will go back several pages, pontificate on a word, a letter, a line. Repeat ad nauseam.

This aspect of hypertext is experienced more literally with MZD’s Only Revolutions, where you literally flip from the front to the back to the front of the book constantly to experience that same moment in time, from two different perspectives. It is a physical process and creates a feeling of symbiosis between the two lovers who are, interestingly, alive at two different points in history, and are travelling towards each other from opposite ends of the USA. It is the great American road novel, turned ergodic and hypertextualised (apt, since MZD’s fans had a hand in creating the novel itself).

But I digress… (as is natural for a novel like this). Let’s look at those all important words “This is not for you”.

Why does this greet the reader before the story begins? Some say it is a warning from Johnny Truant, who let’s face it, wishes he never went to Zampano’s apartment that day with his friend Lude. It is reminiscent of Milton’s “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here” which greets those at the entrance to hell. I would like to agree that it is this an nothing more, as the house is a hell to anyone who enters it and especially goes down the 5 1/2 minute hallway to the great unknown.

However others have stated that the work itself consists of personal notes, scribblings, Zampano’s obsessive writings which are reminiscent of diary entries. The man was a graphomanic and died in a place much like this:

So maybe we are NOT meant to read his things, because they are a diary of his mad thoughts. The reader is solely himself (ironic, as the man was blind – another link to Borges!)

Others have suggested that since ‘echo’ plays a big part in the core theme of the book, then maybe we should apply to myth directly, in that if this is Echo’s voice, only the last two words would chime back to us ‘for you, for you’. An interesting theory (and one of my favourites!)

Lastly, one member of the book club made a very valuable contribution about how he had once met Danielewski at a signing, and he said the following ‘I wrote this for you so you could swim in it, not for you to drown in it’. Very revealing, as yes, it is for us and for the reader. Nice to know MZD worries about us and our obsession with his creation.

So remember guys – have fun, don’t drown. From one Pisces to another, just swim with the current*.

*Just an observation but it is WBD, 1st March. That means 4 days to go for MZD’s birthday, and 6 days for mine. Check out the publisher of my edition of the book:

*sly grin* Okay, I’ll stop now… I’ll stop. Those of you who got it, have got it. Thank you. I’ll just ‘swim’ and try not to drown. 

 

Top Ten Tuesday – Characters I’d Want on a Deserted Island With Me

Summer holidays have begun, which means I can get a bit of blogging done! And what better way to start the season than with fantasising about which characters I’d like to be stuck on a desert island with. Here goes:

1. Hobbits – Don’t laugh… they are excellent hunter-gatherers! I won’t ever starve and they are also pretty laid back so no arguments there. Unless it’s about who does the cooking perhaps…

2. Rhett Butler – Tall, dark, handsome and extremely resourceful. Did I mention he’s tenacious too? That there man has got some mad survival skills. And he’s gorgeous to boot!

3. Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights – If I can’t have Rhett, then Heathcliff will do. They are basically cut from the same cloth!

4. Ewoks – They are cute, can live in forests and I kinda have a secret dream off being like Snow White taking care of these little guys…

5. Four from Divergent – again I’m thinking of the deadly combo of survival skills and insanely hunky body. Yep, I intend to make good use of my time on that there island!

6. The Count of Monte Cristo – You can probably see a theme here. No need to justify it apart from the fact that Edmund has a desert island for himself and knows his way around one. Plus I’m a sucker from intelligent gentlemen. It will get boring on that island with just a hot body to look at.

7. Batman – I just think it would be great to get this guy on his own and try to figure him out. The Dark Knight is a bit of a sphinx, and he he can do with some sun to be honest!

8. Solid Snake – I’m breaking into video game characters here because to be honest, one of my biggest dreams is to learn how to shoot and survive commando style. Who better to train me than Snake himself!

9. Miss Havisham – I want to save this character, like truly save her from death. Having her on the island would allow me to do that. Plus, it would lift her out of her depression!

10. Gruffalo – Let the wild rumpus begin!!

That’s my weird list. What is your’s going to be?

2013 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 70,000 times in 2013. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 3 days for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Gollum Vs. Smeagol Rap Battle

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books, Gollum, humour, Lord of the Rings, music, Smeagol

A new spin on Smeagol’s split-personality syndrome – and he wins hands down because he ‘drops the bass’. LMAO!

2012 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

19,000 people fit into the new Barclays Center to see Jay-Z perform. This blog was viewed about 79,000 times in 2012. If it were a concert at the Barclays Center, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Book Review | ‘Kitchen’ by Banana Yoshimoto

Tags

banana yoshimoto, book review, Cancer, Grief Loss and Bereavement, japanese, kitchen, Soy sauce

Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“The place I like best in this world is the kitchen. No matter where it is, no matter what kind, if it’s a kitchen, if it’s a place where they make food, it’s fine with me. Ideally it should be well broken in. Lots of tea towels, dry and immaculate. Where tile catching the light (ting! Ting!)”

Imagine a book that tasted like a drop of vanilla essence floating in dark soy sauce, smelled like clean linen on an unwashed body and felt like a cat purring on your lap during a violent thunderstorm. That is ‘Kitchen‘. It’s so deceptively simple, yet so full of emotion that it had me reeling. Often I would find myself at the end of a sentence, yet like an arrow loosed from a bow the thrust of it would carry and carry, until it travelled straight into my heart. Yoshimoto’s prose is like a time machine that took me back to some very difficult events in my life, and like her protagonists I was surprised that I too found myself in the kitchen when things looked very bleak indeed.

What is it about food that gives us comfort when facing loss on an earth-shattering scale? Following instructions on how to prepare a dish, making a cup of tea or touching the utensils and knowing their individual functions is an odd yet completely rational way of somehow inserting order into a life invaded by chaos. I think Yoshimoto’s idea of the kitchen as a place of domestic healing and love is something I can definitely identify with.

“Me, when I’m utterly exhausted by it all, when my skin breaks out, on those lonely evenings when I call my friends again and again and nobody’s home, then I despise my own life – my birth, my upbringing, everything.” 

There were some really memorable passages that were shockingly accurate about the raw, keening pain of bereavement. Those that have been through it will probably relive that sadness and find comfort in Yoshimoto’s writing, as the only road to recovery is to convince yourself that you are not alone, even though you may feel that way. And so the most heartbroken characters in the book find others who truly know what ‘rock-bottom’ means. For instance, my favourite character Eriko happens to be a transvestite who decides to undergo major surgery and become a woman after losing his wife to terminal cancer. Yoshimoto never once refers to the reasons behind Eriko’s life-altering decision, but it’s extraordinary how she lets us read between the lines and come to conclusions that sometimes the mania of trying to bring a person back may even entail ‘becoming’ that person at all costs. In this edition there is another short story which has a similar character, a high school boy who lost his girlfriend and brother in a car accident, and finds the only way to cope with it is by wearing his girlfriend’s school uniform. All in all, one can make parallel’s between how men and women cope with loss and it seems women are the stronger sex in Yoshimoto’s world.

“At that moment I had a thrilling sharp intuition. I knew it as if I held it in my hands: In the gloom of death that surrounded the two of us, we were just at the point of approaching and negotiating a gentle curve. If we bypassed it, we would split off into different directions. In that case, we would forever remain just friends.” 

‘Kitchen’ therefore is a strange juxtaposition of happiness, grief, laughter and tears that looks at the different ways people cope with carrying on with life despite all the odds. There are those who keep their feelings hidden and smile in the face of adversity while some change gender just to liberate themselves from the pain they feel. From transvestites to high school kids, Yoshimoto’s cast is colourful and varied as we realise that everyone sooner or later, will be touched by death and through it learn to appreciate every day as a blessing.

View all my reviews

Related articles

• Best Books of 2012 Round-Up (mywordlyobsessions.wordpress.com)
• ‘Asleep’ by Banana Yoshimoto (kimbofo.typepad.com)
• The beauty hidden in between every second (ellenlike.wordpress.com)
• Worst books I read this year (abbyfp.wordpress.com)

Ahh Penguin Modern Classics, How I Love Thee! | Celebrating 50 Years of Good Reads, With Good Reads…

Tags

literary fiction, Penguin Books, Penguin Modern Classics, short story, virginia woolf

Authors we love, and some we don’t: 50 of the best writers of modern fiction are showcased in this collection of 50 little books as Penguin Modern Classics celebrates it’s fiftieth birthday. Which one will you choose?

There it is folks, an entire library of modern literary fiction in one compact little box. How convenient! Having read ‘Hell Screen’ by Akutagawa and ‘The Lady in the Looking Glass’ by Virginia Woolf, I have fallen in love with Penguin’s concept of bringing us tidbits of the best of contemporary fiction. I’m a sucker for short stories.

I am currently taking up the challenge to read ALL of the books in the series which won’t take long provided I can find them all. The great thing about this collection is that they contain stories that not only showcase an authors differing styles (as was the case with Virginia Woolf) but they also bring to light some of the lesser-known, but equally as good works too.

If you want to take up the challenge too then you can find more information abotu the books at the Penguin Modern Classics website or you can purchase the entire set at Amazon or Waterstone’s.

For those interested, here’s a list of all the book’s in the series:

RYUNOSUKE AKUTAGAWA Hell Screen

KINGSLEY AMIS Dear Illusion

DONALD BARTHELME Some of Us Had Been Threatening Our Friend Colby

SAMUEL BECKETT The Expelled

SAUL BELLOW Him With His Foot in His Mouth

JORGE LUIS BORGES The Widow Ching – Pirate

PAUL BOWLES The Delicate Prey

ITALO CALVINO The Queen’s Necklace

ALBERT CAMUS The Adulterous Woman

TRUMAN CAPOTE Children on Their Birthdays

ANGELA CARTER Bluebeard

RAYMOND CHANDLER Killer in the Rain

EILEEN CHANG Red Rose, White Rose

G. K. CHESTERTON The Strange Crime of John Boulnois

JOSEPH CONRAD Youth

ROBERT COOVER Romance of the Thin Man and the Fat Lady

ISAK DINESEN [KAREN BLIXEN] Babette’s Feast

MARGARET DRABBLE The Gifts of War

HANS FALLADA Short Treatise on the Joys of Morphinism

F. SCOTT FITZGERALD Babylon Revisited

IAN FLEMING The Living Daylights

E. M. FORSTER The Machine Stops

SHIRLEY JACKSON The Tooth

HENRY JAMES The Beast in the Jungle

M. R. JAMES Canon Alberic’s Scrap-Book

JAMES JOYCE Two Gallants

FRANZ KAFKA In the Penal Colony

RUDYARD KIPLING ‘They’

D. H. LAWRENCE Odour of Chrysanthemums

PRIMO LEVI The Magic Paint

H. P. LOVECRAFT The Colour Out of Space

MALCOLM LOWRY Lunar Caustic

KATHERINE MANSFIELD Bliss

CARSON MCCULLERS Wunderkind

ROBERT MUSIL Flypaper

VLADIMIR NABOKOV Terra Incognita

R. K. NARAYAN A Breath of Lucifer

FRANK O’CONNOR The Cornet-Player Who Betrayed Ireland

D OROTHY PARKER The Sexes

LUDMILLA PETRUSHEVSKAYA Through the Wall

JEAN RHYS La Grosse Fifi

SAKI Filboid Studge, the Story of a Mouse That Helped

ISAAC BASHEVIS SINGER The Last Demon

WILLIAM TREVOR The Mark-􀀍 Wife

JOHN UPDIKE Rich in Russia

H. G. WELLS The Door in the Wall

EUDORA WELTY Moon Lake

P. G. WODEHOUSE The Crime Wave at Blandings

VIRGINIA WOOLF The Lady in the Looking-Glass

STEFAN ZWEIG Chess

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TBR Piles and Library Lootings…

As I went through my groaning bookshelves the other day I noticed a number of titles gathered over the years that I’ve never really managed to get round to reading. These TBR remnants of 2010 have since become another bullet point on my list of new year’s resolutions. I hope to clear them all come 2012.

In the pile is (bottom to top):

Sun Tzu – The Art of Warfare (trans: Roger T. Ames)
Ancient Chinese manual on martial law written circa. 400 BC. This is a rather special deluxe version I treated myself to which contains the first translation and also other parts of the text that have been discovered over the years. I don’t read enough non-fiction, but having read Thomas Cleary’s ‘Code of the Samurai’ has whetted my appetite for more Far-Eastern Military books.

White Oleander – Janet Fitch
This is my current read (already a favourite) which is a mother-daughter tale told through the eyes of Astrid (the daughter), who suddenly finds herself in foster care after her mother poisons her lover and is sentenced to life imprisonment. I don’t like overly feminist texts, but this one has a deliciously dangerous edge to it that takes, well, the ‘edge’ off all that fanaticism.

Cryptonomicon – Neal Stephenson
Heard loads about this one, bought it, went home, peeked at the first page … haven’t touched it since. This is my waterloo. I prefer Ulysses over this. Plus, the Guardian said it was “a novel of such ambition and intensity that most modern fiction looks timid and shallow in comparison.” The Guardian never lies, and I quake in my boots at the thought of an epic that surpasses all epics.

The Rules of Attraction –  Brett Easton Ellis 
And now for something different… no one does 80’s yuppie culture/ college/ prep school angst like Ellis. This was one of those impulse buys that had the guy at the counter saying, ‘But you look like such a nice girl. Why this book?’ I just smiled sweetly and said, ‘I’ve read worse’. I hope this is a little less explicit than his other works and I am banking on it being a ‘hilarious take on the death of romance’.

Lady Chatterley’s Lover – DH Lawrence
I got part way through this extraordinary story of one woman’s marriage to a rich paraplegic and her gradual love-affair with the groundsman. It’s a very poignant statement of the sexually unfulfilled 1920’s upper classes and treats the subject of adultery with a ‘no frills’ modernity that had the Guardian saying it was ‘a bomb, not a book’ of its times.

Exit A – Anthony Swofford
This one was a total impulse buy. I just liked the picture on the cover. But its premise is promising (a young American who grows up on a US Airbase in Japan who begins to be lured into the seedy, neon-drenched underbelly of Tokyo) and it’s author even more so (Swofford is famous for is memoir ‘Jarhead’, which was also made into a film by the same name.) Reading about seedy, underbelly Japan is one of my guilty pleasures!

When I Was Puerto Rican – Esmeralda Santiago
I have a thing for the Caribbean these days. Especially Puerto Rico and Cuba. It’s carried on over from last year when I read the ‘Motorcycle Diaries’ and ‘The Rum Diary’. Santiago’s autobiography recounts her early years on the island and bewildering culture shock and adjustment to New York City. I like reading about people who have lived in many places and how they define themselves and their rightful ‘home’.

253 – Geoff Ryman
I distinctly remember the early hours of 2009. It was spent reading ‘Air’, Ryman’s amazing mash-up of East-meets-West-cyber-culture-on-the-Steppes. What an amazing experience that was. Ryman is an original. He can write a story using the most unlikeliest of materials. In 253, he delves into the minds of several passengers on an underground London tube as they hurtle towards their destination.

The English Patient – Michael Ondjaate
Can’t live without literary fiction, and I think I’m well overdue reading this one. Everybody has probably seen the movie, but loads have been said about the starkness of Ondjaate’s writing. I just hope it’s not a bleak and flavourless as Cormac McCarthy, which brings me on to…

The Road – Cormac McCarthy
… yeah. I think this is one of those one’s that you should read only to say you’ve read it. ‘The Sunset Limited’ was a disappointment and having got through about 1/5 of The Road, I think this will probably be the same. It’s more depressing than the Mordor scenes in Lord of The Rings!

Ya-Ya’s In Bloom – Rebecca Wells
I’ve had this for a year. Even tried reading it about 5 times, but kept being overshadowed by other more interesting books. There’s something about the dear old South that makes me feel at home. Ideally I’d like to read the first novel before this one, but we’ll see how it goes.

But as if that wasn’t enough, I went on a bit of a book binge yesterday. A trip to the library is dangerous for me. I avoid going (except of course when I have cleared my reading list and need more books) because it means I’m bound to pick up more stuff. As the Rushdie comes to an end, I hope to put my reading into a higher gear, and I always find short reads the best way to do this (and they contribute to my 50 Book A Year Challenge).

 

Library Loot List:

‘The Angel’s Game’ – Zafon
Been dying to read this one. Zafon weaves spells, not stories. He is among the rare authors today who implements dark, gothic Borgian elements in his writing.

‘Lost World’ – Melo
A fairly new book by Brazilian author Melo. It follows an ex-contract killer on a mission to exact revenge from those who betrayed him.

‘The Prisoner of Zenda’ – Hope
An old English Classic and adventure novel published in 1894 that takes place in the kingdom of Ruritania. It’s described as a ‘Prince and the Pauper’ swashbuckler.

‘One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich – Solzhenitsyn
Political oppression in Stalin-era Soviet Union? Check. Gulags in Siberia? Check. Hunger, depression, brooding galore? All check. Trust me, it’s gonna be a good one!

‘Octopussy and The Living Daylights’ – Fleming
Two James Bond classics in one. How did Fleming fit it all into a little over 100 pages? Did he write it in short-hand or something? My first anorexic book of the year…

I haven’t read anything by these authors yet (bar Zafon) and hope to get acquainted with them pretty soon. I was pretty surprised to see how short the Ian Fleming stories were considering they were made into films. I also want to get more Russian literature, and something tells me Solzhenitsyn is a step in the right direction. Let’s see how many of these I can get through till the end of the month!