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Showing posts from 2013

In the heart of the country by J.M. Coetzee

This book seems a bit similar to "The life and times of Michael K" as it looks at a human isolated and how in that isolation, connection to the land, with the natives and even with the concept of God take a very different meaning. Like all of Coetzee's works, a fantastic read. All my life I have been left lying about, forgotten, dusty, like an old shoe, or when I have been used, used as a tool, to bring the house to order, to regiment the servants. But I have quite another sense of myself, glimmering tentatively somewhere in my inner darkness: myself as a sheath, as a matrix, as protectrix of a vacant inner space. I must not fall asleep in the middle of my life. Out of the blackness that surrounds me I must pluck the incident after incident after incident whose little explosions keep me going. For the other kind of story, the weave of reminiscence in the dozing space of the mind, can never be mine. My life is not past, my art cannot be the art of memory. My learning has

The Plague by Albert Camus

An absolute masterpiece that I read in close succession to another masterpiece "The Stranger". Hard to understand how this genius could create stories like this. But the plague forced inactivity on them, limiting their movements to the same dull round inside the town, and throwing them, day after day, on the illusive solace of their memories. For in their aimless walks they kept on coming back to the same streets and usually, owing to the smallness of the town, these were streets in which, in happier days, they had walked with those who now were absent. It was undoubtedly the feeling of exile, that sensation of a void within which never left us, that irrational longing to hark back to the past or else to speed up the march of time, and those keen shafts of memory that stung like fire. In short, we returned to our prison-house, we had nothing left us but the past, and even if some were tempted to live in the future, they had speedily to abandon the idea anyhow, as

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

Reading "Kafka on the Shore" by Murakami was probably not as much of an impact as Norwegian Wood. But for some reason, the passages seemed to strike so very close. Far too close to add my comments to the passages. Sometimes, fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing direction. You change direction, but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step. There's no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That's the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine.

"Nothing to be frightened of" by Julian Barnes

An absolute masterpiece by Julian Barnes. This is the first novel written by him that I have read. The book is about death and the way he begins to think about it after his parents pass away. He examines his belief in God and how and why people believe in God. Some of the paragraphs are simply explosive. I had to stop myself from quoting the entire book for fear of plagiarism. This was a typical statement from my mother: lucid, opinionated, explicitly impatient of opposing views. Her dominance of the family, and her certainties of the world, made things usefully clear in childhood, restrictive in adolescence, and grindingly repetitive in adulthood. It was one of those moments when your parents surprise you - not because you've learnt something new about them, but because you've discovered a further area of ignorance. Was my father merely being polite? Did he think that if he simply plonked himself down he would be taken for a Shelleyan atheist? I have no idea. He died a modern

Ravelstein by Saul Bellow

What a masterpiece by Saul Bellow. Reminds me of the profound impact Dean's December had on me. This book examines many of the aspects of modern life - relationships, identity. And brought out by narrating the life of a man dying of a terminal illness by one of his closest friends. But luckily - or perhaps not too luckily - this is cornucopia-time, an era of abundance in all civilized nations. Never, on the material side, have huge populations been better protected from hunger and sickness. And this partial release from the struggle for survival makes people naive. By this I mean their wishful fantasies are unchecked. You begin, in accordance with an unformulated agreement, to accept the terms invariably falsified, on which others present themselves. There is a parallel between inner-city phenomena and the mental disarray of the U.S., the winner of the Cold War, the only superpower remaining. That's one way of boiling it down. He took you from an antiquity to the Enlightenment,

Augustus by Antony Everitt

What a fantastic book of history. It mixes facts and their interpretation in a proportion so perfect that it makes you walk through Rome that was two thousand years back. Augustus was a very great man, but he gradually grew into greatness. He was a physical coward who taught himself to be brave. He was intelligent, painstaking, and patient, but could also be cruel and ruthless. He is one of the few historical figures who improved with the passage of time. May I achieve the reward to which I aspire ... of carrying with me, when I die, the hope that these foundations I have established for the state will abide secure." His hope was fulfilled. Of all Rome's emperors, he reigned the longest; and his work lasted, with modifications, for many generations. How many statesmen in human history can lay claim to such a record of enduring achievement? Augustus had put the state in order not by making himself king or dictator, but by creating the Principate. The empire's frontiers were

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

He excised any hint of ego, shook off all extraneous embellishments, and sent all transparent signs of imposed logic into the back room. He was a born technician, possessing both the intense concentration of a bird sailing through the air in search of prey and the patience of a donkey hauling water, playing always by the rules of the game. It was a free calendar from the bank containing the photos of Mount Fuji. He had never climbed Mount Fuji. He had never gone to the top of the Tokyo Tower, either, or to the roof of a skyscraper. He had never been interested in high places. He wondered why not. Maybe it was because he had lived his whole life looking at the ground. August ended, and September came. As he made his morning coffee, he found himself silently wishing that this peaceful time could go on forever. If he said it out aloud, some keen-eared demon somewhere might overhear him. And so he kept his wish for continued tranquility to himself. But things never go the way you want them