December, 2018: "Chill December brings the sleet, blazing fire, and Christmas treat."

I have the new Lethem, FERAL DETECTIVE, and Franzen's new collection of essays, THE END OF THE END OF THE EARTH, to kick things off this month.

Started Cities of the Red Night by Burroughs. Not sure what to make of it but I'm intrigued.

GREAT book, Burroughs' absolute best. Hang with it.

Coincidentally, my youngest son is reading it at the moment as well.

Coincidence? Maybe we are receiving a message from the invisible people...

I get along better with them than I do their more corporeal counterparts.

Reading The Corrections, as something cheerful and holiday-related.

Enjoyed Lethem's FERAL DETECTIVE but, like a lot of Lethem's work, the writing is remote and quite unemotional.

I wasn't moved but I was impressed.

I read a mystery from a series I had not read before - enjoyed it until the end as it had a sudden turn into new info that was not hinted at previously. It had to do with a movie being made about Dante's Inferno. I don't have the book with me, will have to edit this post with the title/author later. It drew in elements from Hitchcock's Vertigo and was set in Rome and San Francisco and was very entertaining, but as a mystery buff I like to feel like I am figuring the thing out along with the book, that was my only issue with it (also it was a later book in a series I'd never read so there were references to material from earlier books, but that is not a big deal, it was a good stand alone novel).

ETA the novel was Dante's Numbers by David Hewson.

In other Anna reading news, I picked up Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus on a whim the other day. Bertrand Russel's intro is confusing me already. I guess I should have taken more philosophy electives in college.

Anna, you're going to try Rach 3?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXTH0QIC1LE

Finished Clara Zetkin's FIGHTING FASCISM.

Whatta gal.

A lifelong Communist, friend of my hero, Rosa Luxemburg, and on the eve of the Nazis taking power, she delivered a speech in the Reichstag, defying the goons right to their faces. Seventy-four years old, near blind, a year from death and she didn't give a fuck.

She can play on my team any day.

Wrapped up the e-book of Naomi Klein's THE BATTLE FOR PARADISE, an account of how the "disaster capitalists" are trying to turn post-hurricane Puerto Rico into a rich, white man's playground.

Sickening.

Done with Jonathan Franzen's THE END OF THE END OF THE EARTH.

Many of the essays related to Franzen's bird-watching obsession--birds aren't my sort of thing but he also muses on his relationship with William Vollmann, a trip to the Antarctic...

The guy's word choices are peerless so I'll put up with the birds because of the writing.

Recommended.

Got through Swann's Way, and now am trudging through Within the Budding Grove. In an entirely different vein, I'm reading Gavin Van Horn's The Way of Coyote, and am eyeing about twenty other things I've picked up in the last couple of weeks. I wish I had another me, just to keep up with the reading I want to do.

>14 KatrinkaV: If you give up the Proust you’ll have a lot more time! 😀
I finished The World Without Us and am still working on Voices After Evelyn.

There There – Tommy Orange
Audiobook performed by Darrell Dennis, Shawn Taylor-Corbett, Alma Cuervo and Kyla Garcia.
4****

In his debut novel, Orange explores the world of today’s Urban Indian; people who may be registered with a tribe in Oklahoma or New Mexico, while living in Oakland California. These are people who struggle with the issues of the urban poor, while also trying to work against stereotype, and still connect with and celebrate their native culture.

Orange tells the story through the lives of a dozen different characters, all of whom are going to attend the Big Oakland Powwow. Some struggle with substance abuse and/or alcoholism. Others have issues of abandonment. Some have embraced their heritage despite little or no support from family. Others have turned from a culture they feel has failed them. Their lives are interwoven by coincidence, thin threads of DNA, circumstance, proximity and/or their shared desire to attend the powwow. They are in turn angry, desolate, hopeful, joyous, loving, confused, determined, generous or mean.

I did feel somewhat confused by the work, mostly due to the many characters and the constantly shifting point of view. Still, Orange’s voice is unique and powerful. And I look forward to reading more from him in the future.

The audiobook is performed by four talented voice artists: Darrell Dennis, Shawn Taylor-Corbett, Alma Cuervo, and Kayla Garcia. I don’t really know which performer handled which chapters, other than matching the narrator’s gender to the character’s voice. Despite the stellar job done by all of them, I think I may have enjoyed this more had I read the text rather than listened to the audio.

Tore through Anthony Bourdain's A COOK'S TOUR.

It was everything I'd expect it to be: funny, irreverent and a wee bit nauseating.

The scene where he eats the still beating heart of a cobra is not for the squeamish.

A terrific read, entertaining and instructive. What more could you could want from a book?

The 100-year-old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared – Jonas Jonasson
Audible Audio read by Steven Crossley.
3.5***

From the book jacket: After a long and eventful life, Allan Karlsson ends up in a nursing home, believing it to be his last stop. The only problem is that he’s still in good health, and one day, he turns 100. A big celebration is in the works, but Allan really isn’t interested (and he’d like a bit more control over his alcohol consumption). So he decides to escape, embarking on a hilarious and entirely unexpected journey.

My reactions:
Well, this was a fun romp of an adventure. Allan’s talent is going with the flow, something he’s perfected in a life full of unlikely meetings, and even less likely coincidences. He’s always been able to use his wits, and stay calm, no matter what he’s faced with, and – obviously – has survived quite well with this technique.

Allan and the people (and elephant) he picks up along the way, manage to have quite the adventure. But it hardly compares to Allan’s life story which is slowly revealed in flashback chapters interspersed throughout the book. He’s helped developed the atom bomb, been friends with world leaders, loved, laughed, and LIVED.

This book reminded me of Forest Gump (a book I haven’t read, though I’ve seen the movie). All in all it was an enjoyable parable that tickled my funny bone more than once.

Steven Crossley does a marvelous job of narrating the audiobook. He has a matter-of-fact delivery that eases the listener into the story and really helps with suspending disbelief (especially in some of the more outlandish escapades).

The Namesake – Jhumpa Lahiri
Digital audiobook performed by Sarita Choudhury.
5*****

The novel follows the Ganguli family over three decades, beginning when Ashoke and Ashima’s marriage is first arranged in Calcutta. They settle in Cambridge, Massachusetts where Ashoke is studying engineering, have two children, buy a house and live their lives: Indians with American children.

This is the type of literary fiction I adore. Lahiri writes with such eloquence and grace, letting the reader learn about this family much as she would do when meeting new acquaintances who become friends over decades. Their story tackles issues of the immigrant experience, the clash of cultures, differences (and conflicts) between generations, and personal identity.

While their parents find a community of other Bengalis with which to associate and celebrate life’s milestones, their children – son Gogol and his younger sister Sonia – are clearly Americans. And yet, Gogol still struggles with identity. First there is his odd name, then there are the lunches his mother packs for him, and the holidays they celebrate (or do not). While his parents cling to the traditions of their upbringing, Gogol wants only to fit in – to have a Christmas tree, and eat peanut butter, hamburgers and French fries. On trips back to India to see family and friends, Gogol feels lost; he does not clearly understand or speak the language, is unfamiliar with the city, cannot fathom why his family stays with relative after relative rather than getting a hotel room or renting an apartment of their own for the duration. In some respects, he is an immigrant in both countries.

Towards the end of the novel Gogol reflects on his and his parents’ lives: He wonders how his parents had done it, leaving their respective families behind, seeing them so seldom, dwelling unconnected, in a perpetual state of expectation, of longing. … He had spent years maintaining distance from his origins; his parents, in bridging that distance as best they could.

And he comes to a sort of conclusion: These events have formed Gogol, shaped him, determined who he is. They were things for which it was impossible to prepare but which one spent a lifetime looking back at, trying to accept, interpret, comprehend. Things that should never have happened, that seemed out of place and wrong, these were what prevailed, what endured, in the end.

Sarita Choudhury does a marvelous job narrating the audiobook. She sets a good pace that still allows the reader to absorb the complexities of the writing. Still, I am glad that I also have a text copy. Lahiri’s writing is the kind that I want to pore over, to read and read again.

Found Wallace Shawn's The Fever on a bargain bookshelf yesterday, and devoured it today. Highly recommended; I'm still trying to figure out how he stepped right up to the brink of being ham-fisted, but managed not to cross over that deadly line.

Wrapped up another Anthony Bourdain book, THE NASTY BITS.

Uncollected essays that appeared in various magazines and newspapers.

The book begins with Anthony chowing down on raw seal in the Canadian Arctic (including an eyeball, yum, yum) and there are rants about the kind of morbid obesity that is becoming more and more prevalent in North America, an article on the cult of "celebrity chefs", etc.

Funny and well-written, as always.

Recommended.

Polished off Mahmoud Darwish's epic-length poem MURAL, as translated by Rema Hammami and John Berger.

The translators serve their subject well--this is a narrative of loss and death: the death of hope, any notion of "return". The nakba is present throughout, a deep emotional and spiritual wound inflicted on the Palestinian people, a permanent scarring.

Recommended.

Thanks to a long plane ride yesterday, I wrapped up The Magus. Definitely worthwhile, but I'm left without some answers I'd like to have had—a sensation I'm guessing was probably intentional on Fowles' part.

About a third into The Invincible by Stanislaw Lem. Looks like I'm going to the end the year with a great book.

Finished a gripping crime novel, Madison Smartt Bell's STRAIGHT CUT.

A freelance film editor gets involved with a scam to smuggle heroin into the United States to help his partner/rival clear his debts.

A real page-turner, well-plotted and believable.

Recommended.

I've completely secluded myself this weekend, and finished both The Polish Boxer (Eduardo Halfon) and Varamo (César Aira). I thoroughly enjoyed the latter, probably because I'm a sucker for anything that even remotely hints of modernism. Although I'm glad I read the former, I'm still undecided about it; there's something of the young man's obsession with sex that permeates the thing in an eye-rolling way, but that's not quite putting it right. Anyway, off to American Pastoral now.