The Infatuations – Javier Marías

A book that a very well-read colleague of mine gave me because she found it quite abominable and wanted to see if I thought it was just a matter of translation or not. Turns out, I thought it was quite abominable too.

This is now the third novel by Marías that I have read, and it’s by far the weakest of them. It begins like the other two (one of the central characters gets killed off in the first paragraph) and I have the feeling that the author put more effort into the first 20 lines than he did in the rest of the book.

The dialogues are just extremely long monologues, the supposedly deep reflections aren’t that deep, the decision to call the two main characters Javier and Maria is, well, a bit petty (something that one would expect from those writers that Marías spends his time dissing in this book), and even the idea of a random assisted suicide is something that Paul Auster has done so much better in In the Country of Last Things.

So yeah, glad I didn’t buy the book myself. 

The Maltese Falcon – Dashiell Hammett

Another book that I bought as second-hand despite the fact that I don’t think anyone had ever opened it (seriously, people these days can’t even read a short Hammett novel?!?).

While the years have led me to think that Raymond Chandler was maybe overrated (I still can’t get over the fact that Marlowe is a first-person narrator who finds all his one-liners extremely witty), I actually do think that Hammett was probably a really good writer (and dare I say it, the book version of The Maltese Falcon is probably better than its movie adaptation).

I’m not going to say that this is a masterpiece, because it’s probably not, but it does remain a very pleasant read after all these years – and Sam Spade is someone I’d like to get to know much more than Philip Marlowe (despite the fact that in my mind they both have Humphrey Bogart’s face, clearly!)

Cesare Pavese - La Bella Estate

A book that I stole from my high-school’s library. Needless to say, I am not proud of it (also because, as it turns out, I really didn’t enjoy the three novels it contains!), but with said high-school being on the Canadian West coast, I am afraid I am unlikely to have the chance to return it anytime soon.

Pavese is the most celebrated author from my area, but the consensus in my family is that he is no match for Fenoglio – primarily because the latter immersed himself in politics, the Resistance and the hard life of the locals, while the latter, well, ultimately did not (he flirted with the hard life of the locals, but really stirred clear of politics at a moment in time when this truly affected everyone, including pretty much all of his friends).

Of the three novels, Il Diavolo sulle Colline is the only one that I actually came to like, at least partially (possibly because it shows the mini culture-clash experience by provincial students moving to the big city), whereas Tre Donne Sole offers some interesting points about solitude and suicide (something which later on Pavese himself ended up committing), but little more, and La Bella Estate to me is just a short story about the small delusions of a young girl discovering the joys of her sexuality in a rather old-fashioned way. 

On Beauty – Zadie Smith

Well, at least to buy this book for 50p my mom had to go all the way to the Red House in Bexleyheath (disclaimer: she was going there to see the place, not to buy cheap second-hand books).

Much like with Franzen when he writes about things outside of Minnesota, I honestly think Zadie Smith loses her spark when she goes beyond (Northwest) London. On Beauty is undeniably well written (you don’t say…), but it’s simply not as witty as White Teeth or even NW (whose recent BBC adaptation I had to stop watching after 20 minutes as I found it excessively intense and humourless). Maybe it just doesn’t work as campus novel, or maybe I’ve had too much of the pettiness of some academics in real life, but to me so much of the book just reads like the script from an episode of Black-ish, a sit-com that I really don’t find particularly funny.

What probably disappointed me the most was the big faculty meeting towards the end of the book – I was expecting something as epic as the FutureMouse conference from White Teeth, but instead I actually got a bitchy, well, faculty meeting…

The Crossing – Cormac McCarthy

One of those authors whose books I have both loved (All the Pretty Horses, The Road) and thoroughly disliked (No Country for Old Men, Blood Meridian) – luckily The Crossing belongs to the first of the two categories. Also, and this is a huge plus, my daughter seemed to really enjoy the book – although I am not quite sure whether that was because of the blood, because I stammered so often as I tried to read it to her (damn punctuation, or lack thereof!) or because of the contrast of colours on the cover (the options are clearly given in order of increasing probability).

The Crossing is probably the most touching of the books by McCarthy that I have read, because it’s a wonderful story about defeated humble people and their attempts to, fundamentally, get what is legitimately theirs, overcome moments of sheer horror, and get by with a little help from their friends (or from complete strangers, as in the case of the truck-load of Mexican workers or the doctor). In addition, the two brothers somehow kept on reminding me of my two cousins (who do live in the countryside, but that’s pretty much where the similarities end objectively) and more than any other of his books, this novel made me think of my favourite (although not particularly celebrated) Italian spaghetti western, Quien Sabe?/A Bullet for the General.

So yes, one of the best reads of 2016 and possibly the book by McCarthy that I enjoyed the most. 

Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson

One of the books I postponed reading for, well, about 19 years. The first 4 of those years were because I didn’t feel like reading anything anyway, the following 15 because why reading a book when you already know the story and you are afraid of getting Jethro Tull’s Mother Goose stuck in your head as you read it (“Four and twenty labourers were labouring, And digging up their gold, I don't believe they knew that I was Long John Silver”)?

Well, turns out that you should read this book despite the fact that you already know how it will end because it’s possibly the greatest novel ever written. It combines the sense of adventure of The Lost World or 20.000 Leagues under the Sea with a plot that is ever so slightly less improbable, and Stevenson’s prose is unparalleled – meaning that for me the book ranks up there with Around the World in 80 Days.

As far as bad guys that are actually (maybe possibly) not so-bad (and may have fallen on hard times so might deserve our understanding) Long John Silver is second to none, despite the fact that the narrator is a bit of a know-it-all.

I am not that familiar with contemporary fiction for young-adults, but I really don’t think there is anything that could come even remotely close to this. 

About a Boy - Nick Hornby

Not even 50p. This was actually 30p from the Barbican Library overstock shelves. Now, I do realize that, much like David Nicholls a decade later, Nick Hornby isn’t exactly great literature, but it’s very well written and funny, and its cultural pop references are still better than those of plenty of bestsellers. So go ahead, and look down on me for enjoying a read like this every once in a while.

For once I actually had a book that I could pick-up on a short train journey (not that I use trains often – I just happened to do a bit of parkrun tourism when I was reading About a Boy), while waiting in line at the post office and, erm, on the toilet.

And it was great.

Having watched the movie, most of the gags and jokes were unsurprising (that said, I did still giggle aloud a few times – the dead duck remains priceless) but the ending was much more meaningful than I expected (not that seeing Hugh Grant accompany Marcus’s version of Killing Me Softly isn’t meaningful). And reading about my old neighbourhood always makes me feel all warm inside.

So yeah – Great literature? Not even remotely. Great read? Absolutely. 

Hamlet's Dresser - Bob Smith

An extremely random book – a memoir rather than a novel really – that my parents bought for my wife ages ago (maybe when she moved to London and started to accompany me to see the Royal Shakespeare Company, first at the Novello Theatre, than at the fairly awful New London Theatre, and then finally at the Barbican?).

To me the book is fundamentally divided in three intertwined plots/narrative lines – the narrator’s troubled family past and his complex relationship with his sister and her mental illness, his personal experiences as a dresser/stagehand, and lastly his Shakespeare classes for elderly people in New York City.

The first narrative line is soft and touching, and Smith is actually remarkably good at portraying the situation for what it actually is/was (or at least, that’s the impression the reader gets) without any need to sweeten it, or to portray himself as better or worse than how he genuinely appears to be.

The second narrative line is intriguing – reading about Katherine Hepburn, Jessica Tandy, and all the other great actors who crossed the stage in Stratford CT is like watching a very good documentary with random comments and anecdotes by people who happen to have crossed paths with some of the greats of the 20^th century.

The last narrative line is clearly the one that touches me the least, probably because I am one of those awful people who tend not to find too much poetry in the elderly and the remarkably problematic challenges they have to face on a daily basis – to me those are just painful and very possibly insurmountable. 

The Marriage Plot – Jeffrey Eugenides

Despite having loved Middlesex I resisted the urge to buy this book when I found it selling for 2.50£ at Fopp. And well I did, since it appeared (untouched obviously, because why would people open a book?) on the shelves of the loyal local farm for 2£ less*…

The Marriage Plot is in so many ways one of the best campus novels ever: the confused characters, their witty exchanges (possibly a bit too witty at times? I definitely wasn’t that smart and quick back in the day), their frequent crises, their complex relationships with their families – it’s all there. Then the characters leave college (a Brown that at times is sneered upon by Eugenides himself, although not as much as Lisa Simpson does), and sadly their lives become just a lot less interesting. They seemed smart beyond their years in college, and when they enter the real world they appear not only completely unprepared, which would be fine and understandable, but also surprisingly dull and ordinary if compared to their younger selves.

Or probably I have seen a few too many students with mental breakdowns to be really shocked by the way in which the second half of the book develops.

*Considering I am one of the last few avid readers left in the world, I am quite aware of the fact that if everyone did what I do publishing houses would close even more quickly. But what can I do? I do love a bargain. And also, there are enough books that I still want to read to already last me a lifetime anyway…

On Chesil Beach and In Between the Sheets – Ian McEwan

This time I’m tackling two books at a time, and I can do that because a) I have already talked about McEwan more than enough, and b) put together, the two books barely get over 300 pages. As usual, I got the first of the two from the local farm, and the second was from a wonderful Amnesty International book-sale in Blackheath.

In short: reading the two books quite simply confirmed what I already knew/felt/thought about McEwan. His early stuff (in this case In Between the Sheets) remains dark, incestuous, pornographic and overall – when he doesn’t completely lose the plot (in all senses) – those short stories are frantically interesting and well-written. Most of the books he published recently (in this case On Chesil Beach) read like the author’s celebration of his own talent as a writer: sure, McEwan’s prose remains great, but his plots just bore me these days (and I do realize that the big surprise in the end is meant to make the reader reconsider everything he initially thought about the couple’s troubled wedding night – but is it really that much of a surprise?!?).

So yeah, only a couple more books and then I’ll stop reading McEwan. Well, only a couple more books and I’ll have read everything he actually wrote. 

Youth – J.M. Coetzee

50p. Local farm bookshelves. All that.

Now, I would buy pretty much anything written by Coetzee (and pretty much anything that sells for 50p for that matter) so I couldn’t resist the temptation to buy Youth, but, objectively, this is just a very well-written story of (what was then a) fairly average young man trying to find his way in big and scary London. Sure, Coetzee writes impeccably, and the sections of the story set in the IT company at the outskirts of London have got the traits of a bizarre coming-of-age story (his nerdy  colleague who can’t feed himself is probably the best part here), but that’s about it.

All in all, its literary weight is probably inferior to that of Orwell’s Keep the Aspidistra Flying (which I found just about bearable a few months ago), but since I love Coetzee and I don’t really love Orwell, I’ll try to not say this too loudly…

Vino e Pane – Ignazio Silone

One of the books that I got from my grandparents’ shelves (my granddad – despite oddly still remembering most of the first book of the Iliad by heart – is, well, rather “forgetful” these days, and a couple of years ago my grandma has made the rather commendable decision to only read newspapers).

Vino e Pane is a good book about Fascism and its impact on small secluded Italian hamlets. It’s also a book about Catholic piety and communist resistance (I favour one of the two, you can guess which one…) that is probably at its best when the two intertwine, like in the figure of the old Don Benedetto.

While the success that the book has enjoyed, in particular outside of Italy, is perfectly understandable, the quality of this work doesn’t match that of Silone's Fontamara or, for someone who has spent years reading books about Fascist Italy, of most of the works of Fenoglio, Vittorini, Malaparte, Levi, Revelli… So while I’m glad I’ve read it, Vino e Pane doesn’t really crack the top-10 of my favourite novels about the Italian resistance.  

A Heart so White – Javier Marías

For once a book that I bought at full price! Scary, I know – but Javier Marías was coming to give a lecture at the LSE and I really needed to give him something to sign (being the first in line for an autograph after the lecture, he actually even wrote a line about the book and its secrets on my copy – yay!).

Much like Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me, A Heart so White is clearly written by a literally genius. And as it was also clear during the lecture, this is a genius who knows he is a genius, and makes no attempt to even pretend to hide it (which is actually fair enough, although Paul Preston – the greatest historian of modern Spain – did put up a really good fight with Marías when he disagreed with him from the podium).

Dare I say, I actually loved A Heart so White, despite the smugness of both his author and of a number of his characters, and although I hope that Marías doesn’t treat women in the same way as his characters do. And the secrets of the book, the twist of Juan’s father’s past, and for once even the philosophical reflections in the final chapter are respectively intriguing and, for once, surprising and deep (and I am saying “for once” because I am usually not surprised by big surprises, and tend to find pseudo-philosophical conclusions to be borderline unreadable). 

The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold

Yet another book from the local farm – having read and really enjoyed The Almost Moon I had absolutely no doubts about buying The Lovely Bones, in particular considering it was a not-so-exorbitant 50p…

This is overall a very enjoyable read, though predictably at times fairly heart-breaking for a young father. When its magic tones are kept (relatively) in check it is really rather endearing – after all it reads like the daydream of a teenager who wishes she could be invisible in order to see how others behave without her. And the description of heaven is, for want of a better term, really “cute”.

The problem, for me, is when the aforementioned magic tones unleash their full power – I saw no need for Susie to come back to earth thanks to Ruth’s “gift”. Or maybe I’m just too much of a manly man: cause I don’t care about Susie being re-united in one way or another with Ray (I actually would have preferred for that not to happen) and I am kind of bothered by this mellow and romantic  scene, but man do I love seeing Shoeless Joe Jackson and his teammates come out of the corn in Field of Dreams…

Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro

One of the many books that I have picked up from the local (very urban) farm. Yet another solid 50p investment!

Being ultimately ignorant, I always assumed that Ishiguro just wrote novels like The Remains of the Day. As most literate people will be able to confirm, however, that’s not the case. Throughout the book I felt as if Hailsham was actually Homerton College in Cambridge – something that probably says a lot about my memories of the place!

I honestly can’t say that I loved the novel – I really enjoyed the parts about the relations between the clones (this felt mostly like a very dark and fundamentally humour-less campus novel), but when Ishiguro turns too science-fictionesque he starts to lose me (and my interest) a little bit. Never Let Me Go is a very well-written dystopian novel, but so are countless others (not McCarthy’s The Road – that’s a work of art!) 

A Late Divorce – Abraham B. Yehoshua

Ah, the joy of Israeli literature! Well, actually it’s not as if I loved all Israeli writers, but I do have a soft spot for Yehoshua and Oz (not to mention the fact that this was another book that I got from my grandma’s “collection”…).

Much like most of Yehoshua’s works, this book is magisterially written. The clash between the expat patriarch and pretty much all his family members is both intriguing and ironic, and the confused (and at times confusing) sexuality of one of his sons is so well and carefully presented. I must say I was happy the book wasn’t just a 250-page long stream of consciousness from a young boy, as it looked like at the beginning – I felt like I had read one The Sound and the Fury too many already. And it’s just wonderful to read about fairly normal but fairly unlikable people constantly bickering and gossiping about each other.

The ending is very much clear from the start of the last chapter – I was really hoping that the imposing presence of the man who reminded me so much of Big Chief from One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest was just a red herring, but it wasn’t…

The Cat Specialist – Mo Yan

An extremely random book that we salvaged from my grandma’s shelves (together with other cheap but worthy newsagent tomes) once she was moved to a home – I think this is possibly a collection published in this form only in Italy, but the stories themselves should be available individually and translated worldwide.

Having never really read any Chinese literature (Pearl S. Buck doesn’t count, I suppose) this felt like as good an introduction to it as any, coming from a Nobel laureate and all (although we live in the times of Bob Dylan and the EU receiving Nobel prizes…). I’m normally not a big fan of short stories, but so many of them are so tragically well-written that I was immediately sold on this collection. I know some people might find it blasphemous, but I really thought that Mo Yan shares plenty of stylistic and thematic similarities with the Italian Fenoglio.

These stories of poverty, love, and small dramas are some of the most moving I’ever read – I clearly thought about reading the whole of Mo Yan’s bibliography after this, but the heap of unread books in my flat actually takes precedence for the time being. 

Immortality - Milan Kundera

Very slowly, and not particularly steadily, but I will try to catch-up on missed entries. A couple of months ago a colleague of mine dumped a few unwanted books on my desk – in there I found some greats reads (Peter Carey’s Bliss, for instance), and some not-so-great ones, like this one (although admittedly, it probably didn’t help that I had to read it intermittently during a time of sleepless nights and when my in-laws were around).

As I was reading Immortality I actually started wondering whether Kundera used a ghost-writer for The Unbearable Lightness of Being or whether he simply took himself too seriously after writing that book. Sure, Immortality does have some nice ideas (the first appearance of Agnes, the tyre-slashing, and the first few pages about Goethe – before these start to become rather boring), but I really could have done without hundreds of pages of pseudo-philosophical quibbles. 

And if you want pseudo-philosophical quibbles, the trajectory of the physical copy of the book I read actually represents the circle of life: someone probably once loved it, then my colleague picked it up, and dropped it on my desk after reading it, and after I finished it myself I brought it to the book exchange shelf of an urban farm next to my flat, where I am afraid it will sit for a rather long time (if not for ever). 

Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

Ok, so – as the handful of people who follow this blog will have probably figured out, something has happened. My wife and I are now the proud owners of an adorable little girl. As a result, my reading hours have gone down and my blogging hours have disappeared completely to be replaced by troubled nights and long staring contests with my daughter in the hope of a smile in return.

The week my wife went into labour, I decided that it was a good time to start reading Flaubert. Needless to say, I don’t think I have made the most of the passages that I read between contractions during the 72-hour labour. And after that it took me (unsurprisingly) a rather long time to finish the book as I learned to change nappies and to share my tiny little flat with a tiny little human being (and not-so-tiny grandparents for more than a month).

What I remember about this book is hazy, interesting chapters at the start before Emma actually appears, relatively boring ones as she quickly discovers the boredom of her own married life, and an ending that left me really quite satisfied (I wouldn’t use the word “happy” given what actually happens) and made me re-evaluate the strength of her character.

But the bottom line of all this is that I am back. Well. Sort of. 

A Passage to India - E.M. Forster

Ah, the relaxing joy of an E.M. Forster novel when your pregnant wife is overdue!

Seriously though, this novel was exactly what I needed - I considered reading Howards End, but I don't think I could have survived it emotionally...

Forster's subtle (or at times not so subtle) criticism of Western colonial attitudes is still remarkably relevant in today's world. As is his portrayal of mental illness. As is his description of class issues. As is his discussion of race.

Sure, Forster himself was a Westerner talking about India and was affected by all our (mis)perceptions and (mis)conceptions, but to me he remains fundamentally a genius.

Bliss – Peter Carey

And another book given to me by my colleague as he was moving flats (this time, however, one that I greatly enjoyed).

Bliss’s plot is hilarious (a term that I normally detest, but that I think describes the novel quite well) and its improbable twists all appear somehow believable. I just kind of wish the reader was told what happened to Lucy and her truck-driving boyfriend, but Carey’s novel remains for me a wonderfully entertaining and witty portrait of a clash between high-flying career-focused people and, erm, hippies.

And probably I also really enjoyed this because I know nothing about Australian literature (well, it depends on whether you consider Coetzee to be Australian…). 

A Winter Book – Tove Jannson

A book that one of my colleagues gave me because he was moving (or maybe because he had read it and found it awfully dull?).

Sure, these short stories are really well written, but have no appeal whatsoever to someone who doesn’t have a passionate love for the great North, or for sailing. I had never heard of Tove Jannson, but this book felt like a fairly pathetic attempt to put together a number of stories (and of fan letters – seriously?!?) just to make a quick buck (maybe to pay the medical bill for an 84-old author? Although I’m not really quite sure how many copies the book might have sold). 

The Hound of the Baskervilles – Arthur Conan Doyle

Yes, up until now I had never read an actual Sherlock Holmes novel (only a few of his short stories, but even there not many) and I’m about to say something awful: it’s alright. Not great. Not bad. Alright, which probably means I deserve to be kicked out of this country for many.

The thing is, a number of the surprises (like the mysterious second character found on the moor) are not excessively surprising, and one thing is being smug, but Sherlock Holmes is just a wee bit too smug.

Unfortunately I must say that as far as Sherlock Holmes is concerned, I like his 21^st century alter ego (Gregory House) a lot better. And as far as Conan Doyle creations go, I enjoyed The Lost World immensely more. 

Close Range – Annie Proulx

Typical collection of short stories for my lunch breaks.

Being Annie Proulx, typically well written and extremely interesting (kind of like Cormac McCarthy when he’s not too gruesome). The standout story is clearly Brokeback Mountain, but pretty much every single one of them is remarkable either for its humour, or for its gripping portrayal of life in the Mid-West, or even for its portrayal of attitudes towards mental illness in rural Wyoming.

I think this book would deserve something more than these two lines, but being short stories I’ve sort of ran out of insightful comments already…

The Innocent – Ian McEwan

And with this I have officially finished all the hard-copy McEwan books that I own (although I still want to read Black Dogs).

Much like in Sweet Tooth, McEwan develops both a love and a spy story in parallel, and I feel that he doesn’t do either excessively well. Somehow I had very little doubt as to where the love story was going to end (it is pretty much stated from the start that the relationship won’t last, and it’s also quite clear that Leonard doesn’t really understand Maria). As for the spy story, despite the cheesiness of the depiction of the British/American divide, its premises are actually really quite interesting (and Operation Gold something that even I had never heard of) – it’s just so hard to write a great spy story in a country that has produced Graham Greene and John Le Carré (and maybe I should also add to this list Alan Bennett, whose work on the Cambridge Spies was actually really quite interesting). 

Chocolat – Joanne Harris

I found this old best-seller in a phone box turned book exchange in Lewisham and I’ve only really picked it up because once upon a time my mom won a literary award that was presented to her by Joanne Harris (I was more interested in the 10kg of chocolate that came with it though).

Unfortunately, the book is way more The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul (minus its underlying racism and a little less shallow) than Babette’s Feast. The characters are overall so dreadfully predictable, the attacks on the Catholic Church and on life in small villages not inventive, and the plot, well, borderline pathetic. The only remotely interesting part was the children story-esque ending, with the evil priest gorging on chocolate before fleeing.

Really not a wonder then that this book sold so many copies. 

Radetzky March - Joseph Roth

Ah, Joseph Roth and the finis Austriae! Does it get any better than that? Well, in a way it does, considering that my favourite Roth novel (or rather a short story - The Legend of the Holy Drinker) is actually set in Paris...

Radetzky March is a wonderful novel (despite the fact that it took me a week to finish it because of the impending fatherhood and, erm, the Olympics...) and one of those books that I wish I could persuade my students to read.

Interestingly, Roth ultimately seems to love his characters despite the fact that more often than not these have to be bailed out by the Emperor, and that their careless actions lead directly or indirectly to the death of a number of people throughout the book (then again, the atmosphere surrounding the duel in the first half of the book reminded me of Ridley Scott's The Duellists so those deaths are justified!).

Speaking of the Emperor and his powers - the chapters directly related to his ageing are possibly the best-written of the book, but (speaking as a historian...) Roth seems to conveniently forget the fact that by 1914 the Austrian one was ultimately an empire hell bent on starting a war with Serbia (although not with the whole of Europe).

Another Part of the Wood - Beryl Bainbridge

And with this I, sadly, have exhausted my bookshelf's apparently never-ending supply of Bainbridge novels.

Another Part of the Wood is, yet again, an excellent read (although I should have thought twice about reading one of Bainbridge's books a couple of weeks before the birth of my first child, but hey...). Disquieting as always, the author gives an excellent portrayal of the various characters that are crammed in the rural huts and of their extremely dysfunctional relationships - it's kind of The Big Chill in Wales, with characters worried by even smaller issues (at least initially) and who have probably never liked each other anyway.

Much like with most of Bainbridge's novels, the reader knows from the start that tragedy is just around the corner - although this time it is presented in a very poetic way and doesn't have the gruesome end of that masterpiece that is Harriet Said...

The Crossing - Andrew Miller

I'm grateful to my old English teacher for introducing me to Golding, Orwell, Greene, Vonnegut and countless others.

I'm not grateful to my old English teacher for introducing me to Andrew Miller.

Seriously, the book is an easy read, but it is also excruciatingly boring. And very implausible: sure, there are plenty of people who find it hard to relate to others, but Maud seems to me to be a tad bit excessive (much like her parents - who, with a daughter in ICU following a dreadful head injury, just drop by her hospital before vanishing into thin air, presumably to go home and watch telly).

And what is the solo crossing of the Atlantic meant to represent? Is it Maud looking for her true self, or the author showing off his nautical skills and knowledge of sailing terms (and yes, reading about mast and sterns is that exciting for someone who has never sailed).

Had she sunk it would have added a bit of depth to the novel, but luckily she survives, lands, meets the token noble savages who help her and are not helped in return, and then leaves in the night on a mysterious train - leaving behind her a trail of magic. And utter boredom.

The Book of Illusions – Paul Auster

Quite possibly the best Paul Auster novel I’ve ever read, and I don’t say this lightly.  

Hector Mann, the real protagonist of the book, is as mysterious and fascinating a figure as Master Yehudi in Mr Vertigo (and his bizarre career path post-acting reminds one of Walt’s life in the same book). The love story between the narrator and Alma is a thing of beautiful delicacy, and by the end of the book the reader is happy to know that Zimmer has moved on, but also that he sees no need to tell us anything about who has taken Alma’s place. And it is always refreshing to read an Auster novel that is not set in New York (despite the fact that Zimmer lives there for a while, accidentally in Brooklyn – who would have ever thought…).

The fact that Auster went through the trouble of inventing not just a character, but also his movie plots and his entire body of work, is something that deserves a literary standing ovation (and they’re so realistic that I actually had to look up Hector Mann on Wikipedia, thinking he was a real – if a bit obscure – figure of the silent film era that I had never heard of…). 

Uno, Nessuno e Centomila – Luigi Pirandello

How dreadfully boring! Seriously, I understand this book is meant to be one of the greatest Italian 20^th century novels, but can we all just agree that it’s a 150-page yawn in the 21^st century?

So, Vitangelo Moscarda (even his name is dreadful) is a loan shark and is having second thoughts about his life and his identity. So what? 90 years after the book’s publication all its brilliant points are just so utterly trite. I got really happy when towards the end he got mortally wounded – knowing that there were still a few pages to go I was hoping that the first-person narrator would then start telling some bizarre after-life tale that could add a bit of flair to this novel. Sadly, Pirandello just seemed to use the term “mortally wounded” rather inappropriately, as Vitangelo survives…

Or maybe I’m just being harsh because Pirandello was fundamentally a Fascist?!?

It’s a Battlefield – Graham Greene

What a bizarre Graham Greene novel, and surely one that, had it not been for the wonderful place that was Books for Free in Stratford, I would have never picked up…

Out of all the books by Greene that I have read, this is the first one to be set in England (yes, I know he wrote plenty of other novels set here, I just haven’t read them…). Despite being familiar with so many (almost all?) of the corners of London that he describes, I found these to be so far away from me because of their perceivable bleakness and eeriness.

It’s a Battlefield is an extremely interesting book, despite the fact that all the important characters are not just unlikable, but fundamentally plain awful (and rather miserable). However, it’s quite a shame that Greene never gives Drover a chance to speak ( after all the prisoner is by far the most enigmatic and interesting character in the novel, with his attempted suicide after avoiding a death sentence being one of the best plot-twists I’ve ever come across) 

The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro

Having already seen (and loved) the movie, Ishiguro’s novel really had no surprises for me – but boy was it lovely…

From an historical point of view, Ishiguro does a remarkable job of highlighting how easy it is to be harsh on British appeasers in hindsight because of the consequences of their actions (personally, I think they were fools who thought they understood Hitler and his depravity, but they were also dealt a remarkably bad hand…). And, also, he describes how the patterns of international diplomacy (once the happy game of the chosen few who had moved in the same circles for centuries) changed between the wars as those positions became way more professionalized.

And as for Mr Stevens, much like Penny does with Sheldon in The Big Bang Theory (not the most cultural of references, I know), I wanted to hug him at times and try to explain things that are obscure to him (like banter…) in the simplest possible way.

Too bad that, yet again, I found myself thinking what those people would have voted for in the EU referendum…

Bagombo Snuff Box – Kurt Vonnegut

I don’t even know how I managed (or was it my wife that managed?) to get my hands on this collection of short stories, but I’m glad I did.

I was expecting science fiction, but what I got was a wide range of styles, with stories often about American suburban life (the joy!), and in which the American dream is, in one way or another, crushed time and again.

Vonnegut’s humour and irony are very much there, like in all his other works, and some of the stories (like The Package) would have given me a bit of faith in the future of mankind – too bad they were written 60 years ago and the world is still very much an awful place… 

Un Giorno di Fuoco – Beppe Fenoglio

And this is a collection of short stories that means a lot to me but, I have to recognize, probably will mean nothing to most non-Italian readers (save maybe a few people from Southern France whose experiences and family histories may have been rather similar).

But, refusing to leave my bias aside, I think that Fenoglio might have been the best Italian writer of the 20^th century (surely Il Partigiano Johnny and Una Questione Privata deserve to be considered among the 50 most significant Italian books published over the last 100 years). True, his characters smoke a lot and might have values that are at times anachronistic and at times awfully politically incorrect by today’s standard, but Fenoglio manages to bring to life the common wisdom of the peasantry and their daily problems like no other author, and the short stories of Un Giorno di Fuoco (many of which have nothing to do with Resistance and anti-fascism) are no exceptions. 

According to Queeney – Beryl Bainbridge

Whenever one doesn’t know what to read, s/he can be sure that there is a short Bainbridge novel somewhere.

While not exactly the greatest book ever written (probably the sentence that I use most often in this blog…), According to Queeney is an interesting portrayal of Dr Johnson and his circle – and definitely something that one needs to read as s/he tries to act like a true Londoner (or a Southwark resident).

The start of the book is a bit bland, and the lack of unstable young women is somewhat disappointing for a Bainbridge novel (both Queeney and Mrs Thrale seem a bit too proper to me), but it does pick-up after their trip to France, and Queeney’s letters at the end of each chapter are a much welcome change in style every few pages. 

Dubliners – James Joyce

How I remember my high-school classmates spending months and months reading (?!?) this collection of short stories and pretending that it was the most meaningful book they had ever read. Having read it over a lazy weekend I have a couple of thoughts (both for them and for whoever happens to read this blog):

1.       I understand it was cool to say that one was reading Joyce as a teenager, but, seriously, spending 2 months carrying it around feels a bit excessive – maybe my classmates needed to show off?

2.       I understand it was cool to say Dubliners was the greatest book they had read (perhaps it was factually true, as for a number of them it could have been their first book not written by Roald Dahl), but, honestly, what’s the point?

I have the feeling this is something that you can only appreciate if you’re Irish (probably like you can only appreciate Fenoglio’s short stories if you’re Italian), but if you aren’t – well, to restate my thought above, what’s the point?

The Lost World – Arthur Conan Doyle

When I was a kid I read some of Sherlock Holmes’s stories and kind of liked them, but to me The Lost World was of an entirely different calibre.

Maybe it’s because this week I’ll be going to Crystal Palace to check out the 19^th century dinosaur sculptures, or maybe because the novel reminded me of my youthful love for those creatures, but I loved The Lost World with passion. Sure, the characters are all so representative of authentic 19^th century English values (something with which I am still very much struggling in post-referendum Britain), and many of these features are just offensive by today’s standards (nowadays you don’t quite assert your masculinity by firing guns, at least in theory, and women are allowed on adventurous expeditions, at least at times), but the four heroes all remain charming in their own ways.

I suspect that the book falls into the “young adults” category – and I’m sadly out of it now! – but one thing that really surprised me is that, at the end of the day, it’s really not dated…

The Humans – Matt Haig

And a second entry from my book club’s list (!) – it’s not that I loved this book, not even that I hated it like Norwegian Wood, it’s just that, unlike most of the books so far, it was actually quite enjoyable.

Other than many fairly trite observations about the weird ways of the humans, the novel is quite nice in its exploration of human bonds and emotions. If only Gulliver had actually killed himself there would probably be something more to say about the novel, but alas he didn’t (yes, I’m a horrible person…)

Enduring Love – Ian McEwan

Having read so many of McEwan’s books, it’s nice to be able to smugly say “I like his earlier stuff better”. To me Enduring Love falls in between the aforementioned “earlier stuff” and some of his more recent fairly dull works.

Enduring Love is an interesting read, and one that makes me surely really happy to be out of “real” academia (“you aren’t even ripe yet” said the fox to the grapes?!?). The couple’s dynamics seem remarkably plausible (although I would personally like a bit more support for my partner!) –Joe’s bizarre entry in the English underworld a lot less so (like in Saturday, to me it looks as if McEwan doesn’t really know what he’s talking about).

Most of all, this book actually made me realize why so many of McEwan’s character (including Joe) are in the end rather unlikeable – they’re not just posh, they’re just so obscenely judgemental you want to punch them in the face… 

Tortilla Flat – John Steinbeck

I think Grapes of Wrath is one of the 10 greatest novels of the 20^th century. And Of Mice and Men – despite being imposed upon all the young students in the English-speaking world – is not that far off. But man was it great and refreshing to read a Steinbeck book about poor people that are, erm, happy…

Danny and his friends are just wonderful. They make do with what little they have and love each other (and often manifest this love by beating the hell out of each other, which is always great). So many of the stories and anecdotes are delightfully touching (starting with the young coronel, but also the story of the pirate and how this changes everyone else in the group).

And the last few pages are just perfectly fitting. All good things must come to an end, and one might as well go out with a bang, a big party, and a massive tumble. 

Taras Bulba – Nicolaj Gogol

I had to read some Gogol at some point. But seriously, what the hell?

Sure, I’m not Russian so I can’t understand, but I’m normally all up for epic stories of national courage (even Russian courage, in the case of Michael Strogoff…) but isn’t Taras Bulba (not written in italics because I’m referring to the character and not to the novel) a bit much?

Sure, your son has switched sides (a bit too easily also), but killing him in battle without feeling at least a wee bit emotional sounds, well, heartless. At a certain point even his comrades tell Taras that he might want to take it down a notch but he continues to be an almost perfect killing machine.

One would hope that at least while he’s being burned he would stop. But he doesn’t. He keeps on yelling at his Cossacks. A true leader. And possibly an idiot. 

Forest of the Pygmies – Isabel Allende

Having read and loved Paula I thought I would give an absolutely different kind of Allende novel a chance. Maybe I shouldn’t have done that.

It probably has to do with how old and boring I already am, but novels for young adults “these days” usually can’t match the quality and intensity of the old ones (Salgari beats Allende, Molnar beats Grossman, etc.). The three-headed monster is hopefully more a reference to Cerberus than to the Trinity, but its mystery is surely not particularly imaginative (anyone who has ever wondered why Clark Kent is never in the same room as Superman is bound to figure out the riddle quite soon).

Sure, Allende is commendable in her constant desire to point out that all cultures have to be not just respected but also appreciated, but in this book she says that crocodiles are amphibians and I just can’t take that! 

Fever Pitch – Nick Hornby

I had this book for years, read bits and pieces of it, and know the movie by heart, but I wanted to read it cover to cover at a time in which I was watching some hard-nosed yet inspirational football, and that’s exactly what’s happening with Italy at the Euros right now (that is, until Germany just totally destroys us on Saturday).

The book is undoubtedly well-written and humorous, and so many of the points that Hornby makes clearly echo with most football fans (even people who, like me, have been to the stadium only a few times). I loved reading of his mom leaving him post-it notes with the results of late games when he was a kid (my dad did the same with me, and I still remember his Juventus-Torino 5-0 with a Vialli hat-trick and goals by Ferrara and Ravanelli) and finding out that Attilio Lombardo was indeed also famous in England for his hairline (or lack thereof) more than for his – absolutely unquestionable – skills.

If only there was an actual plot (like there is in the movie) to join the anecdotes together, this would be an excellent novel (well, maybe that’s a stretch), but instead it just remains, erm, anecdotal – and I don’t really love this sort of books as more often than not they’re just way too easy to read and relate to (which is slightly counterintuitive, I do realize). And as a Juve supporter, I suffered every time Hornby described a hooligan charge in the 70’s and early 80’s, because I knew  that at some point it would end up with the Heysel disaster…

Freedom – Jonathan Franzen

One of those books that have been with me for quite some time – to be precise since June 2011, when a student living in my dorm left it behind.

Much like with The Corrections, Franzen does life in Minnesota (in particular the life of frantic women in Minnesota) oh so very well. The problem for me, however, is that I somewhat feel like he doesn’t do life in NY for a cool musician or life in DC for an environmentalist nearly as well.

The chapters authored by Patty are wonderful, the others slightly less so. But going back to Minnesota, the clash between most of the locals and the Berglunds reminded me of the Brexit debates that we are seeing pretty much all over England right now (except in London, because, you know, people kind of like us continentals over here!).

Maybe I wouldn’t have enjoyed reading about Patty so much had she not been a basketball player, but the hypothermia trick is pure genius and is something that I should definitely try out if I ever screw up quite badly with my adored wife. 

The Zone of Interest – Martin Amis

One of those extremely rare books that I borrowed from a library (actually two libraries, since I read half of it in its Italian translation in Bra – yes, my hometown has a funny name! – and half of it in its original version in London). I had somehow managed to avoid reading anything by both Kingsley and Martin Amis, but my mom told me I absolutely had to read The Zone of Interest, and for once I did as I was told straight away.

The Zone of Interest is hugely moving, despite the fact that a number of its characters occasionally read a bit too much like allegories of the German population of the time. Needless to say, of the three main narrators, the Jewish Szmul is the one who often provides the most interesting insight into the (fictionalized) life of the camp. Somehow, though, I have the feeling that the epilogue is a bit unnecessary (much like I felt no need for the final chapters of Group Portrait with Lady or the last book of The Tin Drum) and I feel like the novel would have had a more long-lasting impact on me without its final pages.

The book also made me think about artists telling the stories of people that are not their own. In particular I thought about the comments made by Spike Lee on Tarantino’s Django Unchained. To me, as long as you have class and tact (like Martin Amis in this case), you can tell anyone’s story – sadly two things that were lacking from Spike Lee’s Miracle at Sant’Anna.  

In the Country of Last Things – Paul Auster

I don’t even know how I got this book. A fairly typical Auster novel. And the issue with fairly typical Auster novels is that, well, they are a bit too typical. And when they’re not works of art (to me Sunset Park still tops the list, together with the slightly more atypical Mr Vertigo) they’re just more of the same. And when you have read a lot of them, well, you get the idea.

The entire book/letter reads like an extended introspective anecdote from one of Auster’s bigger novels, and while there is nothing wrong with that in itself, it just doesn’t excite me anymore.

Ah, and I think that McCarthy does American dystopia so much better (although the preparations for the final uncertain trip remind me of the tension of the final scene of The Birds). 

The Closed Circle – Jonathan Coe

And for once a book that my aunt gave me in 2001 and that it took me 15 years to read.

And for once a book by Jonathan Coe that I liked, but not so much.

Probably the events described by Coe were just too recent to be observed with his normally hilarious humour, but I found The Closed Circle to be a bit too sad and bleak. Also, too much of the action takes place in London (it’s just more interesting when Coe talks about the Midlands). And lastly, even though the book has a number of Coe’s customarily dramatic plot-twists, these are just a bid bland (if not stale) if compared to the ones of The Rotters’ Club and What a Carve Up!

The Closed Circle is ultimately an interesting portrayal of Britain’s recent history and the problems of Blair’s (and the former director of my school’s!) Third Way, but it’s just not Coe at his best (or maybe the 70s were a lot more fun than the 90s, or maybe 18-year olds are a lot more fun than 40-year olds, or all of the above!)

Julian – Gore Vidal

It’s not like I haven’t read a book in three weeks (I wouldn’t dare!), I just didn’t update the blog because we had an action-packed few days in Italy collecting second-hand baby stuff and taking my wife’s growing belly on tour for one last time.

Julian is a book that my mom gave me some 15 years ago and that, like all good sons, I kindly ignored for as long as I could (that is until I realized that having loved Memoirs of Hadrian so much I would have at least “liked” Julian). And, much to everyone’s surprise, I did like it.

Despite the fact that the reader can perceive Gore Vidal’s massive ego even through pages that are meant to have been written almost 2000 years ago, the book has a number of things going for it: the triple narrator makes it more dynamic than Memoirs of Hadrian, the frequent digs at early Christianity are just so much more fun than the ones at contemporary Christianity (seriously, too easy and boring!), and the historical descriptions and not-so-obvious-yet-obvious facts (like that one at that point could become Roman emperor without ever having been to Rome) make it a very interesting read.

Yet, I like a time when man was at the centre of things, between the disappearance of the gods and the appearance of God, better than a time after the appearance of God during which the gods tried to regain their lost territory. So, ultimately, Julian is no match for Hadrian, at least for me.