38 posts tagged “books”
- Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin
Next it was time for the graduates to receive their diplomas. Up they trooped, solemn and radiant, in many sizes, all beautiful as only the young can be beautiful. Even the ugly ones were beautiful, even the surly ones, the fat ones, even the spotty ones. None of them understands this -- how beautiful they are. But nevertheless they're irritating, the young. Their posture is appalling as a rule, and judging from their songs they snivel and wallow, grin and bear it having gone the way of the foxtrot. They don't understand their own luck.
- Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin
In Buddhism, knowledge is regarded as an obstacle to our understanding, like a block of ice that obstructs water from flowing. It is said that if we take one thing to be truth and to cling to it, even if truth itself comes in person and knocks at our door we won't open it. For things to reveal themselves to us, we need to be ready to abandon our views about them.
- Thich Nhat Hanh, Being Peace
When we are humble everyone is a potential best friend and our generosity naturally grows. We want to do things, to help out. A wonderful Zen tradition is called "inji-gyo," or secret good deeds. The virtue gained through performing a secret good deed is believed to be immense. So, in a monastery, if one watched closely, you might see a monk secretly mending another's robes or taking down someone's laundry and folding it before the rain comes. In our temple I often find chocolate spontaneously appearing in my mailbox, or a beautiful poem, unsigned. This year the Easter Bunny visited our Sunday service, leaving chocolate eggs under everyone's cushions, even the one prepared for a visiting Zen master. Sometimes the bathrooms are miraculously cleaned overnight. And flowers spontaneously appear in a neighbor's yard, thanks to the children in the temple. Secret good deeds. They are so much fun. In their doing you can't help but smile.
- Geri Larkin, Tap Dancing in Zen
There is something about Pamuk's writing style that brings me back to his works everytime, even though I feel too much is lost in translation from the original Turkish. The storyline of The White Castle is not gripping, though it is certainly interesting enough to make a reader want to finish the book. There is a steady undertone of philosophy that is perhaps more significant than the mundane who-did-what-and-when of an ordinary plot.
An Italian traveller is taken captive by a Turkish fleet and brought to Istanbul where he eventually becomes slave to a Turkish intellectual who, as it turns out, looks identical to him. The ways in which the two men influence each other's lives and contribute to each other's growth over the next twenty-five years or so are slowly unravelled in the rest of the book. However, I can't help but suspect that the original turn of phrase (in Turkish) must be much finer than the English translation, though the latter can't be called bad by any standard.
Pamuk's sharp mind and ability to sift the relevant from the irrelevant are immediately evident, as in his other works. He has a gifted understanding of human nature and the motives behind seemingly irrational human behaviour. For this, The White Castle, a short read of barely 145 pages, is definitely worth your time.
Many men believe that no life is determined in advance, that all stories are essentially a chain of coincidences. And yet, even those who believe this come to the conclusion, when they look back, that events they once took for chance were really inevitable.
- Orhan Pamuk, The White Castle
Fabio Rossi is a thirty-something journalist who, on the verge of discovering the astounding truth behind a story, receives a head injury and upon regaining consciousness discovers he has absolutely no recollection of the last fifty days of his life. Fifty days in which he apparently underwent a complete transformation of personality. Now he's back to being the old Fabio -- but the world around him has moved on and only remembers the new avatar.
Ein perfekter Freund details Fabio's efforts at rediscovering himself, amid his desperation to remember that story he was following up on, and his confusion at his suddenly complicated relationship with a man who was once his best friend.
This was one of those suspense-filled, exciting books that I couldn't wait to get to the end of, but at the same time I had so much fun reading it that I didn't want it to get over. I hope there's a good English translation out there that makes Suter's engaging story accessible to many more readers.
I finished this book in one go last night. It was pleasantly light reading. Basically it's just a bunch of casual poems and rhymes that fill out some more details on Tom Bombadil's life (though it's still unclear where he came from and what exactly he is -- it seems to be a fair inference that he might be a Maia, or at least one of the Ainur) and introduce a few related characters as well. I think I'm going to reread Unfinished Tales sometime soon... If only JRR were around to write more on Middle-earth.
I think the only problem I had with the film version of LOTR was that it completely excluded Tom Bombadil, and I would have loved for him to have had some screen time. Still, I suppose it was hard enough to film such a saga anyway, without accommodating every interesting character.
It doesn't matter what other great praise I might heap upon this book because in the genre of horror, there is one element that is more important than any other -- is it actually scary?
And this one is. The imagery is better than anything one might watch in a horror movie and the ambience that Hill manages to create through sheer verbal art is very, very creepy. I was so freaked out at points while reading this book that someone interrupting me by knocking at my door or tapping on my shoulder was enough to make me screech and lunge forward.
Added to which, it's also a tastefully written, very contemporary book, with more to it than merely the morbid. I read it in a distracted sort of mood which is probably why the story lost me for a brief while midway, but I got back into it soon enough. It doesn't pretend to be spectacularly intellectual or pathbreaking -- it does, though, set your senses on edge and make you feel, at the end of it all, that the experience of being scared was totally worthwhile.
P.S. I just discovered -- thanks to that fount of all knowledge, Wikipedia -- that Joe Hill is the son of author Stephen King. He apparently decided to use this, an abbreviated form of his full name (Joe Hillstrom King), to succeed on his own steam rather than because of his father's fame. Pretty cool.
I don't think too much of Herbert's writing style but he has researched contemporary religion quite well and infused that into this book. Some of his projections are even comparable to Orwell's 1984 and that is a wonderful compliment for any author. I appreciated the true Urdu words he used when exemplifying the languages of Arrakis -- for instance, usul = fundamental value/principle; noukker = servant, and so on.
I'm not sure if I'll buy the next few books in the series because the writing itself is not engaging (though the ideas are). But I know a lot of people who adore this series and I can definitely see their point.
Considering the crazy story of how I acquired The Time Traveler's Wife, it's only appropriate that I ended up liking it a lot. This is, however, absolutely not for people who can't stand sappiness and romance. It's one hundred percent emotional all the time. In fact it's one of those books that you can get so involved in, you feel drained by the time it's over, and yet you'd do it all over again because it was such a wonderful reading experience.
Henry DeTamble is a CDP -- a Chrono-Displaced Person. He travels backward and forward in time unexpectedly. This is the story of how he finds the love of his topsy-turvy life, Clare Abshire. Their first meeting occurs when he is in his thirties and already married to her, and she is six and colouring in drawings in a meadow outside her home. Niffenegger has done a brilliant job of piecing together different times and stages in their lives and making a coherent, engaging, and incredibly moving love story out of it. Yup, I teared up by the end. This is an altogether lovely book.
Show us a book you wish you had written.
