[News] What are you currently reading?

I'm currently reading Twenty Years Later, the sequel to The Three Musketeers, and it is just as excellent, perhaps even more because it seems to move a lot faster than it's predecessor. It's fun to read about stuff that I used to learn about in history classes a long time ago, but that's slowly coming back to me, and combined with Dumas' amazing writing, this book is rapidly becoming one of my favourites (still about 200 out of 900 pages left though, so I'll have to wait with my final judgement, give me a couple more days).

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Finished my French book, and moved on to Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything is Illuminated. I read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close a couple of months ago, and it just blew me away. The humoristic writing style that sometimes resembles a stream of consciousness novel, the likeable main characters, the use of pictures (especially the falling man in the end), have made this one of my favorite books ever. Now that I started with Everything is Illuminated, I see that he used a lot of similar plot devices, the focus on various characters, time shifts, and a certain feeling I get from the text. I'm about half way through, and I don't get the same vibe that I had with his second book, but than again, my opinion can change (I didn't realize what an awesome novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close was until the last couple of chapters).

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Finished with "Everything is Illuminated", read "The New York Trilogy" (Paul Auster), and moved on to The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Murakami Haruki). I liked Everything is Illuminated, but it feels unfinished. Foer experiments with the layout of his text, but it it doesn't blend in as well as it did in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. I also didn't really care for the story that Alex told, I even thought that his story was a bit forced near the end, but I did like the story about Brod and Trachimbrod.

I never read Paul Auster before, but my boss is always raving about him, so I thought I would give it a shot, and what better way to start it then with his most famous novel? I wasn't too fond of the first part, City of Glass, perhaps because I was expecting a more traditional detective story, but I have to say that the book as a whole grew on me. I really liked Ghosts and The Locked Room (perhaps because this one also added clarification to the first two stories, and because it was the closest story to a real detective novel). Question though, does anyone know if all of his books are written in this style, or does he also do other genres?

I think that it'll take a while reading Murakami, not only because it's his biggest novel (about the same length as Kafka on the Shore), but also because I decided to read it in Japanese. I already read KotS in Japanese, which took me two months, but it was a much better experience than going through the translations (Jay Rubin does an excellent job though, but the guy who did KotS missed the ball a couple of times. I haven't really tried the Dutch translations yet, although they are supposed to be good, I know the guy who did them). A lot of my classmates tell me that the Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is his best work, and since I already loved Kafka on the Shore and Norwegian Wood, I have high hopes for this one.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by Capo

Currently, I'm working my way through William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch, Haruki Murakami's collection of short stories Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales for my high school English class.

Good luck on Chaucer, I hated it when we had to read the Tales in high school (maybe it's different for you since you're a native speaker, but to me it was incredibly boring). I really like Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, although I read some of the stories before in his other work. I think that it shows you that Murakami has grown in his writing, especially since it seems that he can come up with short stories on a whim, whereas he seems to have more difficulties with novels. Look at Kafka on the Shore, for example, brilliant book, read the first volume in 2 days, but near the end he somehow got lost in his own story. He doesn't seem to have this problem with simple stories, although they can be rather confusing too.

I haven't really been reading for pleasure lately, too busy for my Japanese Literature class. I've had to read Oe Kenzaburo's The Silent Cry (horrible, horrible book, really overrated), Jun'Ichiro Tanizaki's Sasameyuki (awesome), and I just started Confessions of a Mask (Mishima Yukio). I'm still a bit baffled that the teacher failed to include Natsume Soseki's work, seeing as he's probably the best Japanese writer ever.

I have a few books lined up for when I finish my exams, Jose Saramago, Chuck Palahniuk and Alexandre Dumas (again), but if you guys have recommendations, I'm always open to suggestions.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Didn't really feel like studying the last week, so I spent most of my time reading books in the park. The first one I read wasThe Gunslinger, the first book in the Dark Tower series by Stephen King (first of his works that I read). They've only recently started translating the series to dutch (never bothered trying to read the English version), and it was cheap so I thought I'd give it a shot. It took me a while to get into it, since the story seems to move rather slow in the beginning, and it's difficult to understand the world that it's set in, but it got a little bit better near the end. Of course, The Gunslinger basically serves as the prologue to the rest of the series, so even though it got me intrigued, I'll wait until I read the next volume before I write a more conclusive review.

The second book I read is Mo Hayder's début, Birdman (I read Tokyo before). Most people say that it's pretty gross, and I'm not saying that it's pretty, but I guess that TV shows like CSI present roughly the same level of gore (aside from one or two rather disturbing scenes), so I've gotten used to it. I liked the book, Hayder knows how to create a creepy setting, and how to give you a feeling of uneasiness during certain moments. The characters that she describes are interesting, and even though the story lacks balance at some points, it's still better than your average Nicci French book.

The last book I read is called Op Drift by Belgium's famous detective writer Pieter Aspe (although I seriously doubt that anyone knows him outside Flanders). He has written like 20 books about two detectives, Van In and Versavel, and even though he seems to be running out of inspiration to describe settings or characters, the stories are still quite entertaining, and make for a nice afternoon.

I just started Kader Abdollah's The House by the Mosque. He's one of the more famous muslim writers in the Netherlands, and this book was voted second best dutch book (The Discovery of Heaven by Harry Mulisch was number one, and I would seriously recommend it to everyone). Abdollah's been on the news quite a lot for the past few months, with the whole Fitna debate, and his own interpretation of the Quran, so I thought I'd check out his most famous novel, and so far (halfway), I'm really liking it.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Finished The House by the Mosque. A pretty good book, although I feel that the praise that it has been getting is a bit exaggerated. The first half lacks a clear sense of direction, and Abdolah sometimes doesn't seem to know if he wants to write about the major events of the revolution in Iran, or about the life of a traditional family that has to deal with those events. The writing could also use some work, he manages to pull of some really nice chapters, but at other points you can clearly see that he's not a native speaker.

Started with Invisible Monsters, by Chuck Palahniuk, and am still working my way through the Genji Monogatari. I knew Palahniuk from Fight Club of course, but I only recently started discovering his books. I liked Choke and Survivor, but Invisible Monsters doesn't seem to have the same appeal. Only read the first 100 pages though, so maybe it'll change for the better?

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Recently completed Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk, and liked it quite a lot, more so than any of his other novels that I've read. It appears a bit gimmicky at some points, but not as much as his later books, and there was one bit at the end that I didn't really like, but the characters where interesting, the writing still fresh (unlike Snuff, which is quite possibly one of his worst books yet), and the conclusion is actually satisfying, unlike the ending of Choke for example. If only his more recent novels still ahd that fresh feeling, but nowadays he only seems to care about shock value.

Finished reading Blindness (Jose Saramago) last night. Not my first book from this writer, so I was already used to his writing style (little to no punctuation, extremely long sentences), but this book was still a surprise to me. In an unnamed city, a man who's waiting for the light to turn green suddenly loses his sight. The city soon realizes that this is just the beginning of an epidemic, and the government decides to quarantine all those who are already blind or those who may be infected in an old mental institute, forcing the blind people to rely only on themselves for help, without any contact with the outside world.

The beginning of the book was pretty creepy to me, since the author places you in the blind man's perspective. You get the feeling that you have no idea what's going on, that you are guided by unknown people, and that you yourself are left blind. It isn't until a woman shows up who can still see, that I lost this unsettling feeling, only to be confronted with the horror that people are capable of in the mental institute. The author frequently interacts with the reader, commenting on the situations that he creates in the institute, making it all the more disturbing since he uses it to analyse the dark side of the human mind. The descriptions of the institute and the city are also depressing, showing people who have lost all sense of organisation and behave like animals, without any consideration for others, Saramago paints a terrifying portrait of the social degradation that occurs.

The book has also been made into a movie by Fernando Meirelles (Cidade de Deus, the Constant Gardener) starring Julianne Moore and Gael Garcia Bernal, which has already been shown in Cannes and will be released in September or October. I'm curious to see how Meirelles can evoke the disturbing feeling from the first part, when the reader is basically blind, and how he can create the same atmosphere that the book has. I have high hopes though, since Meirelles is an excellent director, but still worried that a story of blindness can't be brought to the big screen.

I started Notre-Dame de Paris, by Victor Hugo. I tried to read it before, in a horrible dutch translation, so now I'm trying the French version. I also got Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words by Jay Rubin (the translator of Norwegian Wood and the Wind-Up Bird Chronicle) from one of my classmates, which should be an interesting read.

FELIPE NO

Victor Hugo - Notre Dame de Paris

Spoiler:

I’ve tried reading this book before, but the dutch translations didn’t feel right. Now, having finished the french version, I realize how difficult it is to make a correct translation. Most of the names are puns on characteristics, so to ignore a translation is to ignore the rich language that Hugo uses. Then there are other names that can’t be translated because of their historical context, so there you have the first problem, and unfortunately most translators solve this by a mix, which feels too artificial. A second problem is the setting. Hugo dedicates at least 50 pages to a description of Paris, a description that would make no sense to someone who doesn’t know the city or speaks french if a translator decides to leave it like that. But a translation of all the location names damages the setting, since you don’t recognize Paris anymore. There where several streets that I know, but that I failed to recognize in the dutch translation, making it more difficult to get a good feel of the environment and atmosphere.

Regardless of these small remarks, Notre-Dame de Paris is a wonderful book. The prose is rich and beautiful, the story still excellent and moving. There are only a few books where an author manages to transform a building into a character (Mishima Yukio’s Kinkakuji being another example), but Hugo is certainly the master. The Notre-Dame isn’t intrusive, it isn’t the explicit center of the story, but it still manages to serve as a vital aspect, take it away or replace it with another building and you won’t get the same effect. The three main characters, Claude Frollo, Quasimodo and Esmeralda are all drawn to it, as a way to escape the difficulties they encounter (Frollo wants to get away from worldly temptations, Quasimodo sees the Notre-Dame as the only place that accepts it. and Esmeralda just wants to live), so even without words, the cathedral stands at the heart of the story.

Another reason why I liked the book is Hugo’s talent to analyse history, like the evolution of architecture being replaced by printed media as a way for humanity to express itself (one of the most enjoyable things I’ve read over the past year, check it out at the Gutenberg Project), or the history of the Notre-Dame. This novel proves to me that Hugo is, just like Dumas, one of the best French novelists.

Mark Z. Danielewski - House of Leaves

Spoiler:

This is definitely one of the more complex books that I’ve read in the past months. The various layers of the narrative (the Navidson documentary, the academic discussion of the documentary, Zampano’s interpretation, Truant’s interpretation, the editors’ version and finally the author’s story) make it way too difficult to explain what is going on in the book, I tried to summarize it, but failed. The complexity is one of the things that made me enjoy the book, but also one of the things that annoyed me the most. The strongest point of House of Leaves is ironically the only one that never existed, the Navidson documentary. The story of the house and the darkness inside is well written, and the academic discussion that was created around it kept me interested until the end. It is well written, has some memorable passages (Navy burning the book as he reads it, the analysis of Navy’s decision to return to the house).

Unfortunately, the book doesn’t stop here, and ends up being too complex. The main flaw is Johnny Truant’s story. The writing style here is annoying, the character speaks in long sentences that fail to keep your attention (especially if you compare it to Jose Saramago or Oe Kenzaburo, who manage to create complex page-long sentences that are just begging to be reread for their beauty and structure) needlessly distracts, and is in general uninteresting if you take away the growing madness. I had no interest in his family, so the inclusion of the letters written by his crazy mother served no purpose. Another aspect that gets annoying is the typography. Again, there are some nice finds like the scène where Navy climbs a ladder and the layout follows this process, but most of the time it feels too random, and it interrupts the flow of the story (you have to read parts of the book in front of a mirror, other moments you end up constantly turning the book around to keep up with the typographic structure).

The Navidson Record was an enjoyable read, but the rest of the book, the other layers of the story, the countless footnotes and especially the appendices that only add to the confusing atmosphere, taking the fun of reading out of it. This is the only novel by Danielewski that I’ve read, but it was interesting enough to check out his later books, hoping that he strays from making his books to complex.

Jay Rubin - Murakami Haruki and the Music of Words

Spoiler:

I haven’t finished this book completely, simply because it creates spoilers for other Murakami works that I haven’t read yet. It is an enjoyable read, mainly for the various trivia and anecdotes about Murakami, but it’s nothing more than that. Most of the works that Rubin analyzes don’t offer anything new, although a comparison of the various interpretations for the Wind-up Bird Chronicle for example is interesting.

The main aspect that bothered me that Rubin writes too much as a fanboy, he never seems to be critical enough for Murakami’s work, aside from Kafka on the Shore. He fails to point out obvious flaws in Murakami’s earlier work, and he just isn’t objective enough for my taste. This is a shame, since he quotes various Japanese sources that are critical and offer an objective analysis, and it’s a shame that he chooses to ignore this. He addresses the criticism, but he easily dismisses it, trivializes it. For example, he only casually mentions Oe’s critique, dismissing it with a snide and unwarranted remark, not even taking the time to see why exactly Oe is so critical. A more objective view would benefit the Murakami’s work, but I guess that a fan like Rubin isn’t the best man for the job (Murakami Fuminobu does a much better job at a literary analyis).

Up next: A quick reread of The Brothers Karamazov before my huge Amazon shipment arrrves.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by Kyndig

I pretty much just skipped over the the whole Truant fiasco and ended up enjoying this book quite a bit. I did find the bit with the letters from his mother to be very good, independent of anything else in the book. But hey, I'm a sucker for some good tragedy. I also enjoyed many of the poems in the back.

The writing style of the letters was ok, but I didn't really care for her story,since you already knew how it would end from the main book. I read through most of the Truant part, since his descent into madness was quite interesting at some points, but when he would go on rambling again about god knows what, I'd just skip it all together.

How ya doing, buddy?

Finished Elementary Particles (Michel Houellebecq), see the spoiler and moved on to some more academic reading in preparation of next year's dissertation (I can be such a nerd) with Japan's Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperialism (Louise Young), since I have no idea what to write about.

Spoiler:

Before a review, let me say that I’m a bit biased towards Houellebecq since I LOVED Possibilities of an Island. I read it a couple of years ago, and it completely blew me away, stayed in my head for months. Now I’ve finally found a copy of Elementary Particles, the book that made him famous and notorious in France, often labeled as homophobic and racist, and hated by everyone who considers himself a product of the seventies. Incidentally, it took me a while to find the book in french, you’d think that your average book store would offer novels in our two official languages, but nooooooo.

What starts out as a vicious rant against the sexual revolution, that Houellebecq sees as the beginning of the end of humanity, turns into a portrait of our society falling apart. The story focuses on the two children of a hippy mother, the symbol of everything that went wrong since the 60s and 70s. Bruno became a sex addict, an obsessed pervert who desperately tries to find a place within an even more perverted world by hanging around in sleezy brothels, new age communes and Cap d’Agde. His brother, Michel, is the opposite, as he has no sex drive at all, he doesn’t care, he isn’t capable of love, he just displays complete apathy towards the world, and spends his days in a laboratory until even that starts to bore him.

Houellebecq is quite possibly one of the most pessimistic and nihilistic contemporary French writers. You can sense from his reading that he is bored by everything that he describes, that he despises our society. The There isn’t one word that gives you a good feeling in the entire book (which is quite the achievement if you think about it). He paints a picture of a society that is on the verge of a major transition, comparable to the spread of Christianity, or the rise of modern science. Houellebecq is such a misanthrope that the only outcome of this transition is the death of humanity, the extinction of our species (how much more depressing can you get).

Just like Possibilities of an Island, this novel was a thrilling ride, I couldn’t put it down (finished it in two days). You know where it’s going, the outcome is clear from the first page, but you continue to be fascinated by the incredibly dark vibe that you get from the way Houellebecq describes everything, from the apathy of Michel towards everything to the large number of sex scenes. As I said, you know how it will end, but the final pages still came as a huge shock to me, when Houellebecq finally puts all his cards on the table, and reveals how far his misogyny goes.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Started "Les Bienveillantes" (the Kindly Ones I think) by Jonathan Littell a week ago. It won the Prix Goncourt in 2006, and I had my eye on it for a while, but decided to wait for the Dutch translation. Now that it has been published costing 45 euros, I decided that I would bite through the bullet (1400 pages) and get the French pocket for 13 euros (Although it's another Folio edition, I hate those books, they always fall apart after I finish them).

The story is set up as the memoires of a fictional SS-officer, Max Aue, who was stationed at the Russian front during the Second World War, and describes the horrors that he encountered there. The descriptions of the massacres are disgusting, but what's really gruesome is the apathy of Max, he doesn't seem to care when tens of thousands of Jews are executed, and he doesn't seem to be able to show any real emotion. I'm only 300 pages in, but so far there have been 3 or 4 scenes that were so sickening that I had to put the book down. I'm usually fascinated by the darker side of man, by madness, but this was just too much for me. Nonetheless, it continues to be an interesting read, although it's impossible to immerse yourself in the horror for too long. The only complaint I have so far is that there are too many military terms without an explanation, which can be incredibly confusing because of the fast pace of the story.

How ya doing, buddy?