Read recently
Oct. 20th, 2014 10:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
magidWhere 'recently' means 'since the last time I posted about books'.
The Blackpool Highflyer (Andrew Martin) A whodunit set in very Victorian 1905 northern England. I found myself very interested in the period flavor, but not so much in the actual plot, which didn't feel compelling, somehow, or perhaps just not serious enough about the serious things leading me to think of it as more a lightweight thing.
The Believers (Zoe Heller) A novel of a long-married woman whose husband has a stroke, leaving him a vegetative state, and how the whole family reacts, as well as the other challenges going on in their lives. I wanted to like this more than I did, but kept finding wrong notes in the Jewish parts that threw me out of the story.
The Flavours of Love (Dorothy Koomson) A non-chronological novel about a woman whose husband was murdered, and how she holds it together for the sake of her children. She tries cooking some of her husband's favorites (he had been writing a cookbook), though her relationship to food is mixed, at best. I liked this more than I thought I would, even though the plot point it hinges on felt weak (and there were definitely times I wondered if this would turn into a book with an unreliable protagonist).
Princess (Jean Sasson) This is about a Saudi princess in the second half of the 1900s, as told to the author, and I wanted to like it, but it was awful. Yes, bad things happened to her, and to other women around her. But when she had the upper hand, she did awful things too, so I didn't find her at all sympathetic. It also felt more like a third-hand story than actual narrative, more about telling than showing, which is just sloppy.
The Marriage Bureau for Rich People (Farahad Zama) A lovely novel about a retired Indian gentleman setting up a marriage bureau, partly to get out of his wife's hair. It was a lovely read, in a way similar to an Alexander McCall Smith book about Precious Ramotswe, though with its own flavor. I apparently was in the mood for a nice book, and learned a bit more about the castes in India, and some marriage customs of Muslims and Hindus too, plus how families handle marriage, as well.
Pepper, Silk & Ivory (Marvin Tokayer and Ellen Rodman) I think this book is meant as a history book, but is more of a book of anecdotes, leaning towards the personal whenever possible. They're interesting, but they don't particularly coalesce into a coherent whole. Still, I know more about what Jews have done in Asia (China, Japan, India, etc, but not Australia/NZ).
The Cellist of Sarajevo (Steven Galloway) A novel from four people's points of view, about life in Sarajevo during the bombardment of the city. Despite the pain and violence, it reaches towards hope and rebuilding, and the language is beautiful.
Walking Israel (Martin Fletcher) Written by an NBC reporter who's been based in Israel for decades, it follows his journey as he walks along Israel's Mediterranean coast, both what he finds in the moment of walking, and what he explores more in follow-up interviews with people. It was interesting; I've spent relatively little time on the coast (a day-long bus-tour, one Shabbat, barely enough to say I was there), and he's got a lot of perspective about the issues, having lived there a long time but still being a reporter. He looks into politics, but not just Arab-Israeli conflict, but the challenges of being an Israeli Arab (Christian or Muslim), whether teens still want to serve in the army, the reinvention of kibbutzim, treatment of Holocaust survivors, and more.
Vanishing Acts (Jodi Picoult) A novel about a woman whose life is turned upside down before her wedding, finding out she'd been abducted by her father when she was a toddler. The book is told from five points of view, and it's an interesting journey of memory, loyalty, and love.
An American Bride in Kabul (Phyllis Chesler) A partly autobiographical book about how when the author was an undergrad in 1961, she married an Afghan man and went with him to Kabul. She was naive, and found she'd signed on for something far different than she'd expected. Half the book is about her time there and her escape, and half about after that, and the general situation in Afghanistan. It was a compelling read, yet I was left with some questions unanswered. One was about my own perspective: how could she have been so unknowing? And yet, at that time, it was much easier, and so much of recent history wasn't there as a cautionary tale. There were other things that felt a bit like holes, though the fabric of the book, overall, is complete.
Pay It Forward (Catherine Ryan Hyde) A novel about one boy changing the world, one step at a time, in ways that he thinks are failures, and yet later, it turns out not to be. it was interesting jumping around from one person's perspective to another, and not always clear at the beginning who was who, but it came calear over time.
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down (Anne Fadiman) Nonfiction about how miscommunication can lead to some dark places, not just lack of common language, but lack of common referents. The author looked at the story of Lia Lee, a Hmong girl who developed epilepsy when she was three months old. Her parents didn't have any English, and their ideas about this were not at all the same as those of the Californian doctors. This was the lens she used to look at Hmong resettlement in the US, especially given their history in southeast Asia. It's a tragedy on many levels, but beautifully described. Anne Fadiman's prose is always extremely literate, happily using a wide vocabulary that challenges the reader.
The Art of Hearing Heartbeats (Jan-Philipp Sendker) A magical realist novel about the dimensions of love, even across time and space, about finding the right person, and even separate from them, the knowledge of love changes everything. It's also the story of a Burmese lawyer father vanishing from New York City, and his daughter trying to find him four years later, discovering both more and less than she's thought she was looking for.
The Blackpool Highflyer (Andrew Martin) A whodunit set in very Victorian 1905 northern England. I found myself very interested in the period flavor, but not so much in the actual plot, which didn't feel compelling, somehow, or perhaps just not serious enough about the serious things leading me to think of it as more a lightweight thing.
The Believers (Zoe Heller) A novel of a long-married woman whose husband has a stroke, leaving him a vegetative state, and how the whole family reacts, as well as the other challenges going on in their lives. I wanted to like this more than I did, but kept finding wrong notes in the Jewish parts that threw me out of the story.
The Flavours of Love (Dorothy Koomson) A non-chronological novel about a woman whose husband was murdered, and how she holds it together for the sake of her children. She tries cooking some of her husband's favorites (he had been writing a cookbook), though her relationship to food is mixed, at best. I liked this more than I thought I would, even though the plot point it hinges on felt weak (and there were definitely times I wondered if this would turn into a book with an unreliable protagonist).
Princess (Jean Sasson) This is about a Saudi princess in the second half of the 1900s, as told to the author, and I wanted to like it, but it was awful. Yes, bad things happened to her, and to other women around her. But when she had the upper hand, she did awful things too, so I didn't find her at all sympathetic. It also felt more like a third-hand story than actual narrative, more about telling than showing, which is just sloppy.
The Marriage Bureau for Rich People (Farahad Zama) A lovely novel about a retired Indian gentleman setting up a marriage bureau, partly to get out of his wife's hair. It was a lovely read, in a way similar to an Alexander McCall Smith book about Precious Ramotswe, though with its own flavor. I apparently was in the mood for a nice book, and learned a bit more about the castes in India, and some marriage customs of Muslims and Hindus too, plus how families handle marriage, as well.
Pepper, Silk & Ivory (Marvin Tokayer and Ellen Rodman) I think this book is meant as a history book, but is more of a book of anecdotes, leaning towards the personal whenever possible. They're interesting, but they don't particularly coalesce into a coherent whole. Still, I know more about what Jews have done in Asia (China, Japan, India, etc, but not Australia/NZ).
The Cellist of Sarajevo (Steven Galloway) A novel from four people's points of view, about life in Sarajevo during the bombardment of the city. Despite the pain and violence, it reaches towards hope and rebuilding, and the language is beautiful.
Walking Israel (Martin Fletcher) Written by an NBC reporter who's been based in Israel for decades, it follows his journey as he walks along Israel's Mediterranean coast, both what he finds in the moment of walking, and what he explores more in follow-up interviews with people. It was interesting; I've spent relatively little time on the coast (a day-long bus-tour, one Shabbat, barely enough to say I was there), and he's got a lot of perspective about the issues, having lived there a long time but still being a reporter. He looks into politics, but not just Arab-Israeli conflict, but the challenges of being an Israeli Arab (Christian or Muslim), whether teens still want to serve in the army, the reinvention of kibbutzim, treatment of Holocaust survivors, and more.
Vanishing Acts (Jodi Picoult) A novel about a woman whose life is turned upside down before her wedding, finding out she'd been abducted by her father when she was a toddler. The book is told from five points of view, and it's an interesting journey of memory, loyalty, and love.
An American Bride in Kabul (Phyllis Chesler) A partly autobiographical book about how when the author was an undergrad in 1961, she married an Afghan man and went with him to Kabul. She was naive, and found she'd signed on for something far different than she'd expected. Half the book is about her time there and her escape, and half about after that, and the general situation in Afghanistan. It was a compelling read, yet I was left with some questions unanswered. One was about my own perspective: how could she have been so unknowing? And yet, at that time, it was much easier, and so much of recent history wasn't there as a cautionary tale. There were other things that felt a bit like holes, though the fabric of the book, overall, is complete.
Pay It Forward (Catherine Ryan Hyde) A novel about one boy changing the world, one step at a time, in ways that he thinks are failures, and yet later, it turns out not to be. it was interesting jumping around from one person's perspective to another, and not always clear at the beginning who was who, but it came calear over time.
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down (Anne Fadiman) Nonfiction about how miscommunication can lead to some dark places, not just lack of common language, but lack of common referents. The author looked at the story of Lia Lee, a Hmong girl who developed epilepsy when she was three months old. Her parents didn't have any English, and their ideas about this were not at all the same as those of the Californian doctors. This was the lens she used to look at Hmong resettlement in the US, especially given their history in southeast Asia. It's a tragedy on many levels, but beautifully described. Anne Fadiman's prose is always extremely literate, happily using a wide vocabulary that challenges the reader.
The Art of Hearing Heartbeats (Jan-Philipp Sendker) A magical realist novel about the dimensions of love, even across time and space, about finding the right person, and even separate from them, the knowledge of love changes everything. It's also the story of a Burmese lawyer father vanishing from New York City, and his daughter trying to find him four years later, discovering both more and less than she's thought she was looking for.
no subject
Date: 2014-10-21 12:49 pm (UTC)Do you get your reading suggestions from a place/list? These seem to have similarities between them.
no subject
Date: 2014-10-22 02:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-10-23 01:19 am (UTC)