The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoevsky

And finally here we are, the book that stayed with me for pretty much a month! In the words of Coldplay “Nobody said it was easy”, but it was in the end so very worth it. I honestly thought this was going to be one of those books that I would read just for the sake of saying that I have done so, but I was wrong.

The Brothers Karamazov ended up being way less philosophical than what I was fearing and just plain enjoyable – every single character is interesting, deep, and troubled in his/her own way and the fact that some of their ideas and feelings remain hidden for hundreds of pages adds to the interest of the novel. Well, I said every single character is interesting, but I actually meant “almost every single character” as I found Alyosha to be simply too saintly (even more so than his own spiritual father).

Maybe I’m just reading too much into it, but since there is a break in the narrative as Karamazov Sr gets killed (sorry for the spoiler, but also my own Wordsworth Classics edition mentioned the event on its back-cover!) are we sure that Dimitri is ultimately innocent and that Smerdyakov did the deed? I mean, can we really trust Smerdyakov’s own confession? Possibly I’m the one who’s being too philosophical now…

And again, speaking of me reading a bit too much into it, I actually wonder whether the fairly open finale means that Dostoevsky actually thought that at some point he might write something on the lives of the Karamazovs and their women after Dimitri’s “departure”. 

Mother’s Milk – Edward St Aubyn

I had never heard of this author until my mom just forced me to invest 50p in this book of his at Surrey Docks Farm. As we all know, my mom is very rarely wrong (at least when it comes to literature, when it comes to playing cards with me that’s an entirely different story).

The first section of the book details extremely well a number of feelings that I undeniably felt right after the birth of my daughter (minus the borderline psychic older son, and some of Patrick’s self-destructive tendencies), but what is just great is seeing the odd dilapidation of an impressive family fortune in the following sections (one dedicated to every summer holiday of the main character, which I found to be a wonderful idea).

If Patrick’s complex family situation at first runs the risk of reminding the reader a bit too much of the kind of McEwan novels that have come to bore me, its spiralling out of control is actually closer to a more serious version of Jonathan Coe’s Winshaws – and that’s one of the reason why this novel is ultimately so enjoyable. The other reason, although this is far from being politically correct, is its shrewd treatment of people who age badly – not something I necessarily disagree with. 

The Year of the Hare - Arto Paasilinna

I’ve only really read this book because my wife found a copy of it looking for a good home in our building’s lobby. Having read another book by Paasilinna (meh…) I decided to give his magnum opus a chance (and for once I use a Latin term, just because I find it funny to refer to a book like this in pseudo highbrow words).

This book somehow managed to be a best-seller in both Finland and the rest of Europe. And I really struggle to see why. As a funny book, it’s not funny (or at least not funny for me, but then again maybe I lack a sense of humour). As a deep book about discovering one’s true self, it’s really not deep. At most I can see it being reasonably cute for a cute book. But that’s about it. And I really don’t do cute.

And I am worried about the state of world literature if books like this are hailed as something that “will have you laughing and gasping by turns. . . . The writing is as spare and clean as the lines of Scandinavian design. . . . Of the many lines in this book that I cherished, the last is one of the most delicious: ‘Vatanen is a man to be reckoned with.’ So is this book.” The review came from Lonely Planet – I am afraid backpackers might be too worried about expanding their horizons to bother actually expanding their culture. 

Fragrant Harbour – John Lanchester

A book that I got from the book swap shelf at Stratford Station – the only one I’ve ever managed to pick up from there, but it was worth it! I originally grabbed it for my mom, as she had liked Capital more than I did, and only read it after she did and because of her very strong recommendations.

Fragrant Harbour has many of the traits of the standard best-seller: an “unusual” love story, international intrigue, a look at the blurred lines between orgranized crime and top-level impresarios and plenty of others. The thing for me was that, being set in Hong Kong, it was both interesting from an historical point of view and very different from a standard best-seller.

Predictably, the book’s bottom line is that there are colonialists with a heart (and also a sense of humour and self-criticism) and entrepreneurs who are far from being evil capitalists. This is not exactly the most unusual of messages, but it is delivered with grace. And the appearance of Tom’s nephew is something that really makes one hopeful that good people can overcome drunken British hooligans…

With Capital I had the feeling that Lanchester could have made so much more given the rough material he had at his disposal, but I think that with Fragrant Harbour he managed to get the most out of his plot and research – or maybe I’m just way less familiar with Hong Kong that I am with London!

The First Forty-Nine Stories – Ernest Hemingway

It is officially time to go back to blogging, at least a little bit, after almost two months. There are a number of reasons behind my disappearing acts: changing jobs, my daughter starting nursery (and me taking care of pick-ups and drop-offs in an attempt not to feel completely useless) and also the fact that I have been genuinely reading less, with most of my last month spent reading The Brothers Karamazov at a time that wasn’t ideal.

The First Forty-Nine Stories is a book that I actually read months ago, after it was given to my wife as a gift more than a decade ago. Much like other Hemingway books that I’ve read after my teenage years, some passages left me quite untouched, others made me positively shudder at their “manly man-ness”, and some just kind of blew my mind.

My two favourites were easily “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” – because in it I saw more than the standard Hemingway macho hunting story (for once I thought there was more than a hint of self-criticism and dark irony in the finale) – and “My Old Man” – a story that is often neglected but that I truly loved, possibly because that’s the way an only child is bound to feel about his father if he is perceived as being mistreated. 

Germinal – Émile Zola

One of the books that I inherited from my grandparents, and one which my grandad had loved dearly (that is, before he started mashing all his 19^th century greats together and think of how badly Raskolnikov had behaved with the Karamazov brothers, but luckily Valjean had managed to sort everything out).

130 years after its publication, the prose of Germinal is not really cutting-edge (but was that ever the case for a feuilleton?), yet the content remains extremely poignant and, sadly, current (the story of the 33 Chilean miners hasn’t been completely forgotten, at least not by me). There is no need to point out how deep the book is, or how one cannot really understand the rise of the left in Europe without reading works like this – what struck me the most, however, was the wonderfully touching depiction of the daily lives of the French miners (I believe Beppe Fenoglio and Nuto Revelli would then follow in Zola’s footsteps when they looked at the Piedmontese poor in the 20^th century).

And the fact that, in my version of the book, all the names were Italianized was so very sweetly old-school…

Summer Book – Tove Jansson

A book that I’ve bought (again at the Blackheath Book Sale!) because my former English teacher recommended it to me.

The good things I can say of this are: it’s cute, it’s an easy and relaxing summer read, it reminded me of Pippi Longstocking, and it’s so much better than the Winter Book (then again, hardly the literary accomplishment of a lifetime).

And there are ultimately no bad things I can say about this book, other than the fact that it’s “cute” (which I earlier listed as a positive, but it’s undeniably also a big limitation) and that I really wish it had some sort of development rather than being ultimately a collection of free-standing short-stories. Or, yet again, maybe I’m just not deep and poetic (or, crucially in this case, a woman – as I believe a book like this appeals more to a female audience).

But one thing did blow my mind: back in the day those extremely sweet characters who lived in close contact with nature found it perfectly ok to dump their rubbish in the sea. Oh the times they-are-a-changing (very rightfully!)…

The Body of Jonah Boyd – David Leavitt

A book that my mom got from the BookCrossing stand in Turin airport (such a nice idea, and yet, at least in that location, so neglected…) and that she left with me after her last trip.

Having only read particularly “gay” books by Leavitt, I was surprised by how “hetero” this one was. While not of the same literary calibre of The Secret Language of Cranes, The Body of Jonah Boyd is an extremely pleasant read.

I really liked it because it’s Jewish, it’s about academia, and most of all because it’s sub-urban. Yet, I didn’t find it mind-blowing chiefly because I think books about writers are often (even if indirectly) a bit too self-congratulatory – but the title, and the fact that Jonah Boyd is not murdered and left in a ditch as I assumed (or that his body is not sculpted like that of a Greek demi-god and the subject of the desire of the author), is pure genius. 

Oscar and Lucinda – Peter Carey

I had been waiting to read a “real” book by Peter Carey ever since reading his minor Bliss and absolutely loving it – luckily, as is often the case, the Amnesty International Book Sale in Blackheath had the solution to this problem (for 1 £…).

I liked the book, but in all honesty I’m not quite sure it’s Pulitzer-worthy (then again, reading the shortlisted titles, I’m also quite positive Chatwin’s Utz wouldn’t have been a good candidate either) – I found it a bit long (well, unsurprising given the size…), could have done without much of the background stories of Oscar and Lucinda’s families, probably the gambling world doesn’t attract me too much anyway, and I just didn’t get too excited by the big voyage of discovery in Australia.

The book does, however, have a number of great ideas, like the ways in which Oscar fights his phobia of the Ocean, the discovery (for me) of Prince Rupert’s Drops, and the transportation of the glass church, which reminded me of Fitzcarraldo and is a literary picture that many authors can spend an entire career waiting to develop. 

The Autobiography of Malcolm X – Malcolm X and Alex Haley

A book that was given to me as a Christmas gift by one of my closest friends and, despite my normal lack of enthusiasm for (auto)biographies (or even cinematic bio-pics), was actually a quality present.

Despite teaching 20^th century history, I didn’t know much about Malcolm X, so this book was quite eye-opening – I’m not going to debate up to what extent it truly reflects the man’s life (how could I?) but it surely does justice to his myth.

As I read it I kept thinking how much he would have despised me as a rich, white European who teaches on the history of Ghana or Pakistan by starting with the disclaimer “well, I’m a rich, white European” – would have I been the worse of the liberals? And would he have changed his mind after his Hajj

One thing that really struck me was the faith Malcolm X seemed to have in non-white leaders: Elijah Muhammad, Kwame Nkrumah, and even Mao are praised time and again, but, as far as I know, were quite far from being saints themselves (despite the fact that at the time of writing, in Nkrumah’s case, the temptation to identify him as the prototype of the enlightened African leader was quite clearly extremely tempting for everyone).

As I approached the autobiography, I expected its latter parts to be the most exciting ones, but I have to say the chapters I liked the most were probably the early ones, the ones on Detroit Red, the hustler, with his passion for jazz (and his encounters with all the big names of the time) and for swindling people.  

An Artist of the Floating World – Kazuo Ishiguro

Kazuo, don’t let me down (you have found her, now go and get her)! Seriously, I picked this book from the Blackheath book sale because it was meant to be one of his best novels, and I was really quite disappointed.

While it is interesting reading about an artist who was “on the wrong side” during WWII and his justification for his actions, I find the prose and its tones to be, quite frankly, way too bland and pastel-like. On top of that, I’ve always found artists who don’t engage in politics because they are preoccupied with the “floating world” (or at least they are telling themselves that) to be the antinomy of a true artist.

Maybe, had I not had high expectations from this book, I would have enjoyed it more – but I hold Ishiguro to a (much) higher standard than this…

The Refugees – Viet Thanh Nguyen

The very last of the books one of my well-read colleagues gave me before changing jobs. Honestly, I hadn’t heard of Nguyen until then (and he’s a Pulitzer winner, which goes to show how much I know about literature probably!) – my bad…

I’m still not the biggest fan of short stories, but this book is one of the exceptions. What I particularly liked is that it mostly talks about South Vietnamese who were never happy with the actions of Ho Chi Minh, Giap and the Viet Cong.

Obviously, some of the stories are better than others. The meeting of the two half-sisters separated by Oceans, continents and culture is a bit bland, but the story of the old demented professor who confuses his wife and his past lover is pure gold, as is the opening one about the refugee and the gay couple in San Francisco.

At this point, too bad I missed Nguyen’s talk at Shakespeare and Co when I was in Paris last week!

White Tears – Hari Kunzru

A random advanced proof copy that my mom managed to find at the Blackheath Amnesty International book sale. Go mum!

Long chunks of this Kunzru novel seemed to be written by, erm, Paul Auster. Seriously, the feeling of alienation was very much the same. Despite the mixed reviews it seems to be receiving, I quite enjoyed White Tears, probably because it deals with white kids who try to adopt black culture with, in their own way, profound respect and self-criticism.

But in all honesty the gory end is just a bit much, and I could have done without the Charlie Shaw takeover – just a bit too (dark) magical for me…

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running – Haruki Murakami

A thoughtful gift received by one of the nicest visitors we’ve ever had in London. This book is one of the few non-fiction works that I’ve read over the last few years and it was a nice departure from my standard readings.

Short and straight to the point, this is an easy read (maybe too easy, as it often feels like articles from Runners’ World – and I believe one of the chapters was actually that!) but extremely interesting, although in many ways for the wrong reasons: I am often afraid of turning obsessive with my running (I mean, I have all my runs for the past 5 years recorded on a spreadsheet…) and some of the things Murakami talks about act as clear warning signs.

He often talks about his weight (which I find bizarre), about his problems training when he has a lot of work or when he is travelling (just chill!), about his determined attempts to very marginally improve his technique, about his commitment not to ever walk in a marathon (I walked six miles in my only marathon, and finished with a time that was faster than most of his) etc. So yes, I am really glad I’ve read this book, which I think should very much serve as a cautionary tale: have fun running, but don’t take it (and yourself, unless you’re Mo Farah) too seriously! 

The English Patient – Michael Ondaatje

A book that I had on my “maybe” list for years, chiefly because I thought it would have been very faithful to the movie. Turns out, the plot is way more intricate (as is often the case) as is the development of the narration.

But did I like the book better than the movie? Not really – while the character of Kip, the Indian sapper, is so much more interesting and developed than in the film, everyone else seems to talk simply too poetically for me (or maybe I’m just heartless). I had probably read In the Skin of a Lion at a much different point in my life, but I found that novel to be much more interesting of its successor (possibly also because it dealt with a Canadian past I was extremely fascinated by). 

It is clearly a good and interesting book, but, even in the confusion of an Italian villa half-destroyed by the Second World War, it’s all a bit too idyllic.Less poetry, more crude prose, and the book would have been worthy of a 9-Oscar movie. 

The Comedians – Graham Greene

I bonded with the former Registrar at LSE over our common love for literature – although, honestly, I was mostly listening to his suggestions rather than offering much of my own (with the exception of some tips on some Italian novels, at best). I remember telling him that I wished I could teach the Vietnam War by starting with a discussion of The Quiet American, and him saying that his favourite Graham Greene book was actually The Comedians. I can see where he was coming from (although this is not my favourite Greene novel – that’d probably be Our Man in Havana, at least at the time of writing).

In terms of white men trying to find their place in Latin America, I liked The Comedians a lot better than The Honorary Consul, and that’s probably because Haiti to me is much more exotic than Argentina and Paraguay. Also, the Live and Let Die-vibe of the book is truly excellent, as is the self-criticism of Mr Brown (who really reminded me of Rick in Casablanca). I just can’t understand how they managed to make an awful movie out of this book…

Now I think I’ll have to stop reading books by Greene, chiefly because I’ve read a few too many over the last couple of years and I am afraid I might be overdoing (my relationship with Ian McEwan serves as a serious warning here).

Oh, and whoever designed the back-cover of my Penguin edition is an absolute ass committed to spoiling the plot – bravo!

Winter Journal – Paul Auster

A book that I had often seen in bookshops but avoided because, let’s face it, I don’t really like self-celebrating memoirs/reflections on an author’s life etc. Like a child, I only read it because my mom said so. And clearly my mom knows best – sure, it’s a self-celebrating reflection on the author’s life, but if the author in question is Paul Auster, then the book is bound to be extremely well written and, at the very least, the mirror of a very interesting life.

What this book has left me with are chiefly two things: the love and profound respect Auster feels for his wife Siri Hustvedt, and the fact that that he is, or at least he portrays himself to be, rather happy at the prospect of growing old.

At times there are passages I didn’t feel particularly interested in (some stories about his youth, for instance, left me quite untouched), but overall the book is at the very least quite thought-provoking. I never thought Paul Auster would have played pick-up basketball growing up, as pretty much all of his sports references in his other books seem to be about baseball, but reading about that made me happy, as did seeing him go through all the houses he lived in and what these meant to him. 

Burmese Days – George Orwell

I never thought I would get to write something like this, but having now read all of Orwell’s novels I can see why so many people think he was a genius. He’s still far from being my favourite writer ever, but 1984, Burmese Days, and Coming Up for Air are three really good novels (although Keep the Aspidistra Flying is remarkably bad, I only moderately liked A Clergyman’s Daughter, and I honestly can’t stand Animal Farm).

Burmese Days reminded me of some of the finest Graham Greene, but also of that wonderful thing that is Burgess’ Malayan Trilogy – it’s a beautiful portrayal of the pettiness of a colonial society that doesn’t really understand the reality of the land it inhabits, of its silly internal fights, and of the way in which locals try to ingratiate themselves with the Europeans.

Flory doesn’t possess the literary weight of Burgess’ Crabbe, but he is still a deeply fascinating character. And sure, the book was written by a person who quite clearly thought that British imperialism was dead by the 1930s (and history ultimately proved he wasn’t far wrong), but that doesn’t mean this book of fiction, if taken with a pinch of salt, isn’t historically accurate. 

Perfidia – James Ellroy

It’s been a month and two days since my last post, so let’s get back to my commentaries (I would love to be able to call them reviews, but I’m aware they’re just three paragraphs on my impressions of books!). Perfidia was a novel I quite literally dove into after reading a falling madly in love with L.A. Confidential. Probably owing to its size and bright red cover, my daughter tried to snatch it every time I opened it. She loved it a lot. Me, less so.

Being Ellroy, it’s obviously superbly written, fast-paced, witty, intriguing, intricate and all that. In addition, the exploration of the fictionalized shady dealings in the organization of internment camps for people of Japanese origins set-up in the US at the start of WWII is absolutely fascinating.

But there is a but: while I absolutely loved how Bernstein, Lana Turner, and plenty of other celebrities of the time (or their look-alikes!) appeared in L.A. Confidential and The Black Dhalia, I think that Ellroy goes too far with Bette Davis in Perfidia. An epic one-night stand with Dud Smith, sure, but making her such a focal point of the plot was just a bit excessive. And even in this case, I’m not quite sure how I feel about Ellroy re-using yet again so many of his characters: they remain awesome, but I found myself no longer as interested in their lives as I was in other books in which they appeared. 

The Idiot – Fyodor Dostoevsky

One of the “big” books that I wanted to read during my wife and daughter’s prolonged stay in Brazil. I succeeded, but at times it was honestly quite hard.

The Idiot started off as possibly my favourite Dostoevsky novel, mostly because Lev is such a wonderful character (or maybe I’m biased and he’s actually just a 19^th century Russian version of Forrest Gump?), but after Part I the book just goes on and on a bit too much, and I actually often struggled to keep track of who the characters were (Aglaya and Nastasia in particular merged into one at multiple points).

It’s undeniably my fault to a very large extent – I should have put a more serious effort in reading the book instead of going through most of it during lulls at work (shh…) – but, for want of a better term, after 200 pages I just started to find the book a bit boring. And after dismissing a Dostoevsky novel with a banal word like “boring”, I have officially lost every credibility as a reader/blogger/pseudo-intellectual/human being…

Seta – Alessandro Baricco

A book that my wife received from one of my relatives some ten years or so – probably given to her because back then her Italian wasn’t yet absolutely faultless like it is now and/or because she had liked Novecento.

And I actually kind of liked it, which came to me as a rather big surprise. Not so much because I don’t normally like Baricco, but mostly because I’m often not too fond of the people who cite him as one of their favourite authors (unless they are 16 or less, in that case all, or at least some, is forgotten). Yes, I am an awful snob. I honestly have to admit that spending an hour reading this story (defining it a novella would be too much) was quite enjoyable. Yet, I don’t have that much to say – yes, the book was nice enough, but has the literary weight of its silkworms. 

A Clergyman’s Daughter – George Orwell

Another step in my quest to read all of Orwell’s novels (not because I love him or because they’re many, but because I have, well, his “complete novels”).

Orwell himself seems to have disliked A Clergyman’s Daughter, written at a time of financial difficulties and little literary inspiration. Oddly enough, I didn’t dislike it – compared to the dullness of Keep the Aspidistra Flying this was a welcome journey of self-discovery, and I did enjoy the writing (except for the chapter set in Trafalgar Square, the only one the author apparently found worth something).

This is not to say that I particularly liked the book though – I kept on thinking how (literally) miserable the hop pickers were compared to the peach pickers of Grapes of Wrath, and attacks on Christianity (despite my remarkable distance from it!) normally bore me to death, as in this case.  

The Human Stain – Philip Roth

A book that I picked up for a small donation from 1LoveCommunity in Canary Wharf – absolutely lovely place and a really, really, really good book. I saw the cinematic version of The Human Stain when I was still a teenager trying to woo my high-school crush with my intellectual profile. I thought the movie was average at best, and so was the high-school crush at the time.

The novel is objectively a very easy sell with me: an odd kind of “campus novel”, written by one of the greatest American Jewish writers of the 20^th century, with a fair bit of racial problems, Vietnam, family violence and mysterious pasts. It also has a lot of sex. Actually, a bit too much of that and of related overconfidence (or overcompensation?).

The Human Stain is probably as good an “American” novel as American Pastoral. At times Dean Silk appears a bit too eloquent and articulate, but then again he probably wouldn’t have been able to live a life like his without exceptional intellectual dexterity. The one thing that bothers me, though, is that I couldn’t picture Faunia as anyone other than Nicole Kidman (the actress who portrayed her in the movie) and I really don’t think she should have had her face. 

The House on Mango Street – Sandra Cisneros

I originally had no idea how this random book made its way onto my bookshelves. Turns out it was an old book my wife bought during her college days in the US, then brought down with her to Bolivia, was boxed and shipped to Brazil after her family moved there, and finally found its way to London after she went down to South America on an extended visit. The book has been around, and it shows – it’s covered with foxing stains and its pages seem to hold together by pure coincidence.

I had never heard of it (my bad, as usual, as a self-critical white European male) and had no expectations. Given its size, I figured I could read it during one of my daughters’ rare naps and, for once, did it without reading “around it” on the web beforehand. Judging by its cover, synopsis and vignette structure, I assumed the book would be raw, unpolished and rough, and the read would feel scattered and intermittent. And it was. But the book was also intriguing, well-written and, in a way, eye-opening.

So I’m really glad I invested little more than hour reading this. I have read very little non-white North American literature and this book was a very welcome change – I wouldn’t go as far as saying that it’s one of my favourite books, but, despite its frequent violence, it felt like a nice bit of fresh air. Oddly enough, I also think that some of its stylistic shortcomings (I’m not quite sure vignettes can make for great literature, for instance) were simultaneously some of its most interesting tracts. 

L.A. Confidential – James Ellroy

OK. Let’s get back to work (well, odd turn of phrase considering that I have been neglecting the blog for the last month and a half because of, well, work…)

L.A. Confidential has been sitting on my bookshelf (probably the last of my books from Books for Free in Stratford) for ages. Thing is, having watched the movie I felt like there was no need to rush to read the book. But, as often happens, I was wrong – the two are wildly different, something that is quite evident as soon as one starts to realize how intricate the novel’s plot actually is (and even then, it keeps on getting more and more intricate as the book progresses).

Ellroy is as self-assured as writers can get (reading his interviews at times I have the feeling that his ego might have trumped even Gore Vidal’s) but he might have a point, as I think he’s a better crime writer than Chandler, Hammett, or pretty much anyone else in the 20^th and 21^st centuries. His characters are cocky, witty, degenerate, ruthless, and yet not implausible. On top of that, real-life characters add a decadently classy touch to this Ellroy book (or any other work of his, really). And in the novel, Jack Vicennes comes into his own so much more than in the movie.

I loved the movie, but the book was of an even higher calibre – surely one of the best I’ve read so far in 2017 (one day I should do a yearly top-10…). Because of this I am now reading Perfidia, which might have been a bad decision, but more on that later…

Coming up for Air – George Orwell

Despite really liking 1984 (I was about to write “enjoying”, then realized it wasn’t the best of terms for the book!) I’ve never really been a fan of Orwell. Honestly, I’ve only read this book because a few weeks ago I picked up Penguin’s complete Orwell novels.

Turns out, I really did like Coming up for Air too. After the first few pages on the dullness of the main character’s life I thought I was in for another Keep the Aspidistra Flying (and that would have been a big, big disappointment), but I was wrong and this book is quite a lot more than that. The bleakness of the setting actually reminded me of Graham Greene’s It’s a Battlefield, and the novel is overall remarkably insightful in its observation on the impending Second World War.

I enjoyed both the flash-backs and the present-day narration, but the one issue I had was with the main character’s disillusion with the present and his attempts to go back to the good old values of early 20^th century rural England, because more often than not that’s the kind of person that would very much like to see me leaving the country. 

The Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas

With my wife and baby daughter gone for six weeks (!!) I decided this period was my best chance to read the thickest book I had on my shelves.

The Count of Monte Cristo is one of the most gripping books I’ve ever read – parts of it reminded me of Stevenson, others of Verne, and I suspect quite a few would have reminded me of Hugo (this remains only a suspicion because, erm, I’ve never actually read any Hugo). The vendetta is at times a bit too prolonged, and I would honestly differentiate between the degree of guilt of Fernando, Danglars, Villefort and Caderousse, but I don’t really hold Dantès responsible for the death of young Edourad de Villefort (much like Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Dantès plays no role in the outcome of this subplot).

However, for spellbinding that the book is, I really don’t think this is great literature. It’s honestly just a bit too easy to read and to follow (the only intimidating thing being the thickness of it in the end), I never got even remotely confused by the plot or by the characters in it. As one of my colleagues rightfully said, it’s probably just a book that used to be low-brow and that is now considered to be high-brow because of the passage of time and historical setting.  

Travels with Charley – John Steinbeck

A book that I read for my office’s book club – a clear step in the right direction, but still not a particularly good read (and the fact that I am labeling a book by Steinbeck in this way makes me want to hit myself!).

The problem for me is probably that there are so many works of fiction and non-fiction about travelling around the US that it’s so easy to make comparisons, and these don’t really favour Travels with Charley. If one sees this book as a fictionalized travel account, then it doesn’t come close to comparing to On the Road. If one sees it as a non-fiction description of Steinbeck’s travels as a self-styled bum (and I really don’t think you can consider yourself one when you are that successful and popular a writer!) then Jack London’s The Road is miles above.

Or maybe it’s just that I’m not that fond of dogs. Or that being married to a Latin American woman I’m bothered by the sub-header “In Search of America” for something that is only limited to the USA. Or even that I often found myself thinking how many of the manly men that he encountered on his journey would have voted Trump. 

Howard’s End – E. M. Forster

How I suffered. It’s not like any of this was unexpected (quite the opposite as, thanks to the help of Merchant-Ivory productions, the plot had very few surprises for me), but it’s all so heart-breaking. I very much like to identify with poor Mr Bast (it’s not as if I came from a poor family, but I am still the first kid to go to university, and went to another country – and LSE and Cambridge at that – and scrubbed dishes six nights a week for three years in order to pay my own expenses and feel like a pseudo-proletarian). Seeing him ultimately mistreated by people who (in some cases) mean well but fundamentally only see him as their own little project and not as, erm, a person, is just too much.

Sure, Charles will go to jail following Bast’s death, and his own kid (whom he will never meet) is going to inherit Howards End and be all posh – but that doesn’t even begin to make up for a stupid death under piles of books or the awfulness of not being in control of one’s own life because some do-gooders who are completely out of touch with reality secretly (or not so much at times) think that they know what’s best for everyone.

Being Forster, it’s obviously superbly written, but this story just gets me so very worked up!

Humboldt’s Gift – Saul Bellow

The first (and so far only) book I’ve ever bought from Skoob near Russell Square, and one that I got mostly because my dad remembers loving it but couldn’t recall a single element of the plot.

Sadly enough, this is a Bellow novel that I liked, but that’s about it. In many ways I didn’t think it was Jewish enough (compared to Mr Sammler’s Planet) or sufficiently innovative (compared to Herzog).

I found Renata to be hardly believable, and Citrine himself to be hardly likeable. Again, like the pickpocket in Mr Sammler’s Planet, the criminal Cantabile was for me the most interesting character in the story (and whenever he is around the book becomes immediately more interesting).

Or maybe I’m just overcritical because I don’t like how rich Citrine is and I got upset thinking that in the end everything worked out and that Humboldt really did leave him a great gift. 

In Cold Blood – Truman Capote

I actually had to wait for my wife and baby daughter to be quite literally on the other side of the planet (Brazil) before I could muster the strength and courage to read this book. And to think that when I was young I thought that Capote had just written Breakfast at Tiffany’s and nothing else…

The opening chapter was, for me, by far the hardest to read – not so much because of the brutality of the scenes (I was already quite familiar with the story), but because I was almost physically sick by the point Nancy’s friend found the first body and couldn’t stop thinking of Bobby Rupp (Nancy’s boyfriend) and what he must have experienced.

The rest of the book didn’t have many surprises, but it did end with the added (and for me really unexpected) drama of the stories of Lowell Lee Andrews, George York and James Latham – and all the people they killed before joining Perry and Dick on the death row – and that so nearly tipped me over the edge.

The House of Spirits – Isabel Allende

Am I being overly harsh or is this book simply not of the same standard as Paula? The answer is that maybe I’ve just completely outgrown magical realism (which is sad, because back in the day I had loved A Hundred Years of Solitude so very much).

I honestly think that, had it not been for Clara’s extra sensory abilities, I would have enjoyed the novel a lot more. And I would have probably also liked it better if the characters weren’t ultimately representations of various social and political groups (and periods) in Chilean history (the roman à clef as a genre often gets a bit on my nerves). And the fact that Allende also openly declares that Blanca never married Pedro Tercero because she didn’t love him enough just stings – the guy deserved better.

But then again, most of this probably applies only to 85% of the book, because from the moment Alba gets arrested the novel gains massively in literary, political and moral weight (although it’s really too bad that Allende picked the allegoric name of Alba/Dawn for the character that is meant to symbolize hope for the future – think outside the box!)

The Malayan Trilogy – Anthony Burgess

A book (well, actually three) that my mum gave me back in my teenage years. She asked me all smugly if I knew who Burgess was and, having just discovered Kubrick at the time, I had to disappoint (or impress?) her by saying that yes, I did know he was the guy who wrote A Clockwork Orange. After that pseudo high-brow cultural exchange, neither one of us read the trilogy for a good dozen years.

Turns out that the three books are just awesome. The atmosphere is very similar to that of many of my beloved Graham Greene novels, with a not-so-veiled critique of the white man and the wonders of colonization and “progress”. What I found particularly interesting is that the three books have a very different mood: Time for a Tiger is at times absolutely hilarious (and Nabby Adams and his love/dependence on warm beer is one of the best side-kicks I’ve ever come across), The Enemy in the Blanket is a much deeper exploration of love and envy than I thought I would encounter after reading the first book, and Beds in the East is the book that I would like all my students to read when they study the British decolonization process.

All in all, I probably enjoyed the book so much because Crabbe’s approach to colonialism reflects mine, and also because he goes out with a  bang (or a plop?) 

Una Vita Violenta – Pier Paolo Pasolini

My parents each had a copy of this book when they moved in together back in the 1980s and, thirty years later, realized they had no need for two copies in the same house so gave one of them to me (that said, they’re not even sure whether they read the novel or not!)

I did love Ragazzi di Vita, but I found Una Vita Violenta (which in many ways follows in its footsteps) to be of a whole other calibre. Whereas one grows to like the Riccetto in the former a bit less as the book goes on and he settles within “the system”, I actually fell in love with Tommaso more and more with each page (after feeling the intense desire to strangle him during his football match with kids half his size at the beginning of the book, I just felt the need to protect him from the evils of the world).

Sure, his political path is a bit too allegoric for me, but by the end of the book my nerves were completely shattered. I was glad he did not drown in the flood that hit his old neighbourhood, but the end is really no less devastating (and yet, it is the only way the book could/should have ended in order to be one of the great works of the Italian literature of the last century). 

Watership Down – Richard Adams

When I rescued this book from the “table of unwanted items” in my building it was more beaten up than Bigwig after his big showdown with General Woundwort. It was worth rescuing it. Not that, unsurprisingly, its state improved after being put in my bike bag and taken to work every day this week!

As an adventure book Watership Down is just great. It’s got tales of heroic bravery, suspense and friendship. From that point of view it ranks up there with Treasure Island, Around the World in 80 Days and The Lost World in terms of children’s (or at least young adults’) literature. The problem, though, is that, even in this case, I could have really done without magic and folklore: I didn’t care for the stories passed down from generation to generation of rabbits, and I would have liked Fiver a lot better had he not had extra-sensory perception!

Sure, only bucks appear to have a prominent role and does take very much the back seat, but I really don’t see it as too much of a problem and I don’t read too much of a macho message into it (maybe because I’m a man!). 

Breakfast of Champions – Kurt Vonnegut

One of my latest Fopp acquisitions (actually strictly speaking my mom bought it for me…). After loving all the other Vonnegut novels and stories that I had read, the most I can say in this case is that Breakfast of Champions, despite being one of his most famous works, is alright (which I think is also how he felt about the novel himself).

Nothing more, nothing less. Alright. The book is not really a novel and neither it’s a long short story, and I can’t somehow push myself to label it a novella (it just doesn’t feel right). So, because of its felt pen drawings and its clear autobiographical traits I’ll just call it a gift that Vonnegut gave himself for his 50^th birthday, or maybe a literary way out of (or further into?) a mid-life crisis…

1934 – Alberto Moravia

Well, after being left totally indifferent by Gli Indifferenti I had to read another book by one of Italy’s most famous writers. And after all I did love so many of the movies taken from his works (La Ciociara, Il Conformista and Ieri, Oggi, Domani).

1934 is undeniably interesting, but I still didn’t find it that great a read. While a good literary device, the trick that is played on Lucio makes me suffer (I always empathize too much in these cases!) and I also found it rather improbable. Not to mention the fact that the many scenes of a sexual nature to me read mostly like the unfulfilled desires of a 75-year old man.

I also could have done with fewer philosophical passages on the meaning of life and love and more on the nature of Fascism. Also, I find it interesting that Moravia considers the year 1934 to be the 7^th of the Fascist stronghold on power, since most historians would make this start either in 1922 with the March on Rome or in 1926 with the “Leggi Fascistissime”, but maybe he referred to the Grand Council of Fascism becoming the Italian constitutional body in 1928. Pedantic, I know, but probably this is as close to a deep academic point I made in the last two years…

Cities of the Plain – Cormac McCarthy

Up until a couple of weeks ago, I only disliked McCarthy’s books when I found them too gratuitously violent (Blood Meridian and No Country for Old Men). Sadly enough Cities of the Plain proved that on some rare occasions I might not fall in love with McCarthy’s novels because they can also be, well, average.

The prose is still great and the characters interesting if a bit boring in their stubbornness, but I have two problems with this book.

1. Was it all just about capitalizing on the success of All the Pretty Horses and The Crossing? Cause I really saw no need to bring back John Grady and Billy (despite the fact that they are two of the characters that I loved most in history!) and pair them together – I want my cowboys to be allowed to ride on in the sunset and never be seen again at the end of books

2. John Grady survived countless attacks in the Mexican prisons in All the Pretty Horses and then gets essentially destroyed in a knife-fight by his dead lover’s pimp. Now, I understand hating your enemy affects your judgement (thanks Godfather II), but I seriously would have expected more from one of the coolest men ever…

Mr Sammler’s Planet – Saul Bellow

Saul Bellow is probably as underrated a Nobel Prize winner as any, and the fact that my second-hand bookshops very rarely have his books is undeniably a sad sign! But hey, luckily my parents had two copies of this novel (and Skoob near Russell Square had Humboldt’s Gift, which I will hopefully read soon).

Mr Sammler’s Planet is wonderful, witty and deep. It is also typically Jewish and New Yorker, which makes it an instant sell with me. For all the depth and likability of the protagonist, however, the two most interesting characters are the dying Elya (a perfect patient, and surely a very good doctor – if uninterested in his profession) and the stylish and mysterious pickpocket, whose bizarre decision to impress Sammler by showing him his member is for me one of the great creations of American literature. Speaking of great creations of American literature, though, it’s important to remember that nothing here matches Herzog’s graphomania…

And I could talk about Sammler’s experiences in WWII, but the book is ultimately about overcoming those (at least to me), so I won’t. Instead, I’ll say that this book mentions Ferdinand the Bull, without a doubt my favourite story between the ages of 3 and 6. 

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain

A book that I’ve had on my shelf for ages (clearly!). And, to be honest, had I also owned a copy of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer I would have probably started with that (which would have been a bad call, considering that I quickly came to dislike Tom Sawyer in this novel).

Am I at ease with the way in which Jim is portrayed? Not always.

Do I think Huckleberry really escapes civilization? Not fully, just see so many of his moral dilemmas regarding Jim’s future (and past).

Do I think this is a work of art? Absolutely.

Huckleberry Finn combines the sense of adventure of the best Verne, Stevenson and Conan Doyle with what is ultimately a great moral depth (sure, so many of the comments on slavery make – and well they should! – people cringe, but it’s undeniably a step in the right direction for late-19^th century white Americans).

But, to go back to my first few lines, I honestly disliked Tom Sawyer a lot – and I think that all the ordeals he made Jim go through in the last few chapters were just too mean, gratuitous and so not funny. So, despite liking Huckleberry Finn so very much I am not going to read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer anytime soon…

The Gambler (and other stories) – Fyodor Dostoevsky

When it comes to buying me books I have fundamentally four categories of friends (from the largest to the smallest): those who don’t even try because they are too scared (I feel your pain, and I apologize for being a snob!), those who try to buy me books and fail miserably, those who ask me what books I want or directly give me book vouchers (always very much appreciated), and those who just buy me books and don’t fail miserably (I salute you). This collection of stories comes from a friend belonging to the last category.

Some of the short stories in the collection I found quite boring (White Nights above all, despite being one of the most well-known works in this book), but others I found absolutely brilliant: A Nasty Story and The Meek One in particular not only don’t show any sign of ageing, but they are also so incredibly touching (I feel no sympathy for the protagonist of the former, and not that much for that of the latter, but plenty of sympathy for the celebrating family and the wife and servant respectively).

The Gambler itself is a wonderful novel(la?) about human weakness – when Dostoevsky describes the main character’s “system” it appears quite clearly that his own system mustn’t have been too different. The one issue I found, however, is that after the bombshell of grandmother’s arrival and her subsequent departure the pace of the novel slowed down too much and I lost a fair bit of interest, regained only in the last few pages with the summary of everyone’s lives given by Astley. So yeah, they probably should have kept on gambling instead of leaving Roulettenburg!!

The Road – Jack London

And exactly four months after my baby’s birth, I am now fully caught up with the books I have been reading lately. This was an old book that my mom passed onto me because they had two copies and were going to donate one to our local library if I wasn’t going to pick it up.

I had never read any Jack London (unless you count children versions of White Fang and The Call of the Wild) and The Road, in particular at the start, just blew my mind. The first couple of sections beat pretty much all the other books on American economic crises that I have read (except for Grapes of Wrath – that remains at the very top, despite the fact that I am aware of the fact that it deals with another recession).

However, after one gets the general idea, the book has a tendency to repeat itself quite frequently (I’m not quite sure how many “blinds” London jumped on in those two hundred pages!). That said, it remains an excellent read, and it is surprisingly humorous for a 19^th century collection of anecdotes about hardship and deprivation!

The Virgin Suicides – Jeffrey Eugenides

And with this I can say I have read all of the books that Eugenides has written so far (easy – they are three). This was a Christmas gift from a close friend, and it came in the weirdest edition ever – the size of a small notebook, not quite sure why Picador felt the need for that.

It was undeniably very interesting, and with a literary weight much more considerable than The Marriage Plot, but it doesn’t really come close to Middlesex. Seeing that it was divided in five chapters, I assumed each one of those was going to relate to the suicide of one of the five Lisbon daughters, but three hundred (very short, cause after all it is the size of a notebook) pages go by between the discovery of the first and second suicide.

The suburban setting makes the book an instant sell for me, the curious first-person-plural narrative works really well here, and the moment when the narrators find Bonnie’s body makes your heart drop (despite the fact that it was declared from the start that all five sisters would kill themselves). It is however a shame that, despite the mystery that surrounds the household, Lux’s character is very clearly delineated while the other sisters all blur into one. Also, the fact that the narrators are invited into the house by the last four remaining sisters before they kill themselves makes them look more selfish (and potentially meaner) than what I think they really were. 

The Accidental Woman – Jonathan Coe

And this is the last of the books that I bought myself for Christmas.

Hmpf. It was alright as a read, but that’s pretty much about it. The humour in it wasn’t lacking, it was just not particularly Jonathan Coesque. And most of all, one thing is having an intrusive narrator – but this one was just a tad bit excessive.

Apparently Jonathan Coe wrote this novel while studying for his Masters – it’s nice to see that not all British authors are already great writers since their student years and that Zadie Smith remains very much a unique case!

Diary – Anne Frank

I had never read this book chiefly because I had a wonderful middle-school teacher who had us watch the great 1959 movie (in the same year she had us watch Gillo Pontecorvo’s Kapo, Norman Jewison’s Hurricane, Barry Levinson’s Sleepers, study in depth the Arab-Israeli conflict, and plenty of other things – easily the best teacher I’ve ever had while in Italy).

How does one actually read Anne Frank’s diary? Again a rather problematic philological issue: she wrote it thinking that she would share it with posterity herself, but everyone knows how her life ended and I’m not sure any reader can read the diary without constantly remembering that the SS will eventually breach into the Franks’ hiding place.

Regardless of that, and regardless of how heavily or not the diary/diaries might have been edited, this book remains an exceptional read. It is undeniably extremely well-written, and knowing Anna’s tragic end makes her comments about love appear even more cute (for want of a better term). I am not going to comment on her political acumen, because after all we are talking about a young girl who found herself locked in a flat for two years, but her personal observations  on the attitudes of her family and the other people around them can remain a priceless primary source for any young historian studying the Second World War. Too bad my own students probably don’t even manage to read a book a year. 

Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe

A book given to me for Christmas by a close friend, and one that all the fancy native English speakers in my high-school had to read for their courses.

Now, I didn’t quite know how to approach this book from a philological point of view: I am quite sure that as a rich white European I am not exactly the target audience for the novel, but at the same time I have the feeling that most of the very few readers left in the world are, like me, rich white Europeans – so who really should be reading this book?

To me the novel is very much divided in two (and not in three, as the chapters would suggest). The first part, full of Nigerian folklore, is the one that interested me the least (not because it’s Nigerian, but because it’s folklore, and I often have very little time for it – unless it’s Jewish folklore, I have a soft spot for that…) and I did not think too much of what I suspect would appear “barbarian” to many Western readers. I saw a lot of the descriptions of violence as either acts of war – which we are so much more scientific and classy at carrying forward, not sacrificing the defeated enemies but simply mistreating POWs even in the 21^st century – or plain and simple marital abuse – again,  I don’t think we are that much better than 19^th century Nigerians from this point of view.

The second part of the novel is the one that really got my interest though, when the white European settlers finally arrive. And probably the evil ones scare me less than the supposedly well-intentioned ones… Needless to say we are ultimately savages, but we all knew that didn’t we?

The Dwarves of Death – Jonathan Coe

The joys of walking into Fopp and finding that it has changed its stock of books quite considerably! This was a Christmas gift to myself (one of the very few I have ever felt entitled to) alongside Brighton Rock and Coe’s The Accidental Woman.

According to Jonathan Coe’s website this is his weakest novel, and according to a number of people on goodreads, the plot twists in the book are just implausible and the focus on music excessive. I disagree with all those accounts. Sure, The Dwarves of Death doesn’t even come remotely close to What a Carve Up! or The Rotters’ Club, but it was a great read on the plane (not to mention the fact that I am currently reading The Accidental Woman and I am finding that to be quite a bit weaker than this book). Also, sure, the plot twists are implausible, but so are the ones of Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels (to which the absurdity of the novel made me think more than once) and this is not a problem for me. Lastly, obviously there is a lot of focus on music, but this is not overpowering and it feels great to read of the inability of the protagonist’s drummer to keep a beat, much like me.

But surely I am biased, as the book is set in the same area of London where I live, although man it has changed over the last 30 years!