Sci Fi Experience 2011

It is time once again for Carl V's Sci Fi Experience. If you want to join in go here and if you want to check out people's reviews go here. I have been waiting for this to begin! I have Broken Angels by Richard K. Morgan on my ipod ready to listen to (I enjoyed his Altered Carbon) and the Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi on my coffee table in hard cover. I also have Daemon by Daniel Suarez, Light by M. John Harrison and Old Man's War by John Scalzi on my Kindle. I don't think I will get to all of these but if I do there are many more on my list. And as always I am looking forward to reading all the other reviews and adding to my wish list. Thanks Carl for hosting again!

Kook

What Surfing Taught Me About Love, Life, and Catching the Perfect Wave by Peter Heller

I am not a surfer, never aspired to be a surfer, don't live in a location where there is much surfing and don't know any surfers. I was spending way to much time in an airport and looking for something lighter than what I had with me for reading and picked this up in a bookshop. I cannot say it is a great work of art or well written for that matter but it was entertaining and introduced me to a world that I knew nothing about. In fact, I immediately went out and rented three surf movies: Endless Summer, Step Into Liquid and Blue Horizon. I had no idea that people are surfing one hundred foot waves. I also picked up the new book, The Wave by Susan Casey, that looks really interesting.

But back to this book. Peter Heller seems to have made a career for himself going on adventures and then writing about them: extreme kayaking Tibet's Tsangpo gorge, the "deepest river gorge in the world"; a radical and dangerous campaign on an "eco-pirate ship" against Japanese whale hunting in Antarctica - and that is just his published books. His adventures are also chronicled in his articles in Outside Magazine, National Geographic Adventure as well as others. His web site has quite a few of his articles. But back to this book - Kook about surfing.

In Kook, Peter Heller sets himself the task of trying to learn how to surf in one year. He starts out in California and works his way through Baja and into Mexico. In the process he meets all sorts of surfers, from guys nobody has ever heard of to the famous. Oh yeah, and his girl friend comes along and learns to surf too. A surfer certainly wouldn't read this book the same way I did but for a non surfer it was a very accessible and entertaining introduction to the surfing world. I don't know if this is the best introduction to surfing (you cannot beat the visuals of a video for really understanding the waves) but I found it very interesting and was glad I read it. I will probably pick up some of his other books as well.

People of the Book

by Geraldine Brooks

This book was a surprise to me. I read great reviews of it when it first came out in 2008 added it to my wish list and forgot about. Years later I needed to put something on my ipod for a trip, came across it, remembered it was supposed to be good and got it without really knowing what it was about except vaguely a book. While it was far more serious then I expected, I really enjoyed it. The framework is that our narrator is a young rare book restorer who is tasked with restoring the Sarajevo Haggadah and when she comes across a clue in the book to its history such as a wine stain, salt or an insect wing, we get to hear the story of how that wine stain etc. got there and gradually the entire history of the Haggadah unfolds.

And quite a history it is, from its creation in Spain and travels to Venice, Vienna and Sarajevo barely escaping the inquisition, the Nazi's and the Bosnian War. The author has an interesting map on her web site of its travels. While not a "thriller" I thought the story was just fascinating, especially since it is in most part true. And I am always fascinated by illuminated manuscripts.


I was not familiar with the Sarajevo Haggadah or its history but I don't think that took away from my enjoyment of the work. Obviously this is a work of fiction and I understand that experts knowledgeable of the actual book and its history may take issue with some literary license taken but as a literary work I thought it was great. Each of the story lines was fascinating as well as the many characters and I also learned a lot of interesting history that I was unfamiliar with. I highly recommend it.

A Wild Sheep Chase

by Haruki Murakami

This is my third Murakami book (after Kafka on the Shore and The Wind -Up Bird Chronicle) and I was certainly not disappointed. Apparently this is the third in the Trilogy of the Rat but I haven't read the first two (which are not readily available in English) and did not feel that I was missing anything while reading A Wild Sheep Chase. The un-named main character is drifting in his life, his wife leaves him, his business is ok but not very interesting, he describes his life as mediocre. Then he gets summoned by a mysterious businessman interested in a photo of sheep used in one of his brochures. He is tasked with finding the unusual sheep and sets off on an adventure. He meets interesting characters - a woman with the most beautiful ears, a sheep man, a sheep professor who never leaves his hotel room and it appears that his friend and business partner (the Rat) who had earlier disappeared is also on the trail of the same sheep.

This was the most straight forward Murakami that I have read (and also the earliest) and can easily be read as a simple detective story. But what I love most about Murakami is the beautiful writing and of course the wonderful characters. And if you feel like it, you can delve into the endless quest of "what is it trying to say" and "what does the sheep symbolize". What resonated most with me however was the narrator's nostalgic yearning to recapture something of his youth. His stay at the cabin in the mountains with nothing to do but read and cook or bake, perhaps go for a run made me nostalgic for my youthful stays at my parents cabin, with nothing to do but read, cook or go for a walk in the woods or a swim in the bay. No television, no dvd, no running somewhere on an errand or to pick up take-out. I miss that.

I understand that Dance, Dance, Dance is a sequel to this and I am looking forward to reading that as well. I am looking forward to lots more Murakami in my future, including a new release in English in the fall of 2011. Although I admit that when I find an author that I really enjoy like Murakami I am afraid to read all of his work too quickly for fear of running out of new books to experience. If anyone has any suggestions on which Murakami I should try next, let me know.

I note that In Spring It Is Dawn has started a Haruki Murakami Reading Challenge 2011 which I immediately signed up for. This book completes my participation in Bellezza's wonderful Japanese Literature Challenge 4. Thanks for hosting another great Challenge Bellezza!

Bookmarks

Here is what looked good in the November / December Bookmarks Magazine issue.

C, Tom McCarthy
Room, Emma Donoghue
Bitter in the Mouth, Monique Truong - S
Hunger, Knut Hamsun
Percival's Planet, Michael (about discovery of Pluto)
What is Left the Daughter, Howard Norman (set in Nova Scotia)
The Bird Artist, Howard Norman
The Dreaming Void, Peter F. Hamilton - SF
The Dervish House, Ian McDonald - SF
Pattern Recognition, William Gibson
Zero History, William Gibson
Fall of the House of Walworth, Geoffrey O'brien -NF

All books appear to be available for the Kindle.

Bookmarks

Here is what looked interesting in the September/October 2010 Bookmarks Magazine.

The Man Who Invented the Computer, Jane Smiley
The Daughter of Time, Josephine Tey
Passage, Connie Willis
The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet, Reif Larsen
The Tattooed Map, Barbara Hodgson
The Incident Report, Martha Baillie

Contemporary Russian Literature:
Something by Boris Akunin
Dream Life of Sukhanov, Olga Grushin
The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books, Elif Batuman -NF
The World to Come, Dara Horn
Moscow Rules, Daniel Silva

Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan - S
Riddley Walker, Russell Hoban -SF
Cookbook Collector, Allegra Goodman - S
Deep Creek, Dana Hand
The Thousand Autums of Jacob de Zoet, David Mitchell - S
Kraken, China Mieville -SF
The Passage, Justin Cronin - SF
Blood Oath, Christopher Farnsworth
Operation Mincemeat, Ben Macintyre - NF

The Savage Garden

by Mark Mills

Bookmarks had a review of Mark Mills’ new book, The Information Officer, a thriller set on Malta during WWII. While I don’t often read books about war I have always been interested in (yet know little about) Malta because the Knights of Malta once owned the island where I currently live. In reading about the Information Officer many of the reviewers liked it but commented that it was not as good as the Savage Garden. I looked up the Savage Garden and it sounded interesting as well, so I decided to start there.

The Savage Garden is the story of a young Englishman who comes to Tuscany to study the famous Renaissance Garden of Villa Docci. While living with the family at the Villa and studying the garden he begins to investigate the garden’s and the family’s history and learns of two unexplained murders that occurred 400 years apart. As he delves deeper into the symbolism of the garden and becomes more personally entangled with the family things get more and more dicey for the young man. It is a mystery after all so I don’t want to give the plot away. Suffice it to say that while the murder mystery was entertaining but fairly light, I really enjoyed the mystery of the garden. It was very atmospheric and I could just see the beautiful yet crumbling villa, the now neglected once spectacular garden and the quirky family. It made me want to buy a plane ticket to Florence right away. Not great literature, not great mystery writing but an enjoyable diversion if you want a pleasant visit Tuscany without actually going there. I bet the author could bring Malta to life as well so I will probably give the Information Officer a try sometime.

The Man Who Loved Books Too Much

by Allison Hoover Bartlett

There are few genres that I enjoy more than books about books. I love reading about other people obsessed by books and the entire book world. This is especially true as the world of book collecting is a world I have chosen not to participate in but I entirely understand its allure. Years ago when I lived in Boston one of my favorite things to do was to go to the Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair (which is incidentally this weekend) all by myself. I never bought anything but I would just gaze at the beautiful book bindings, fore edge paintings, illuminated manuscripts and rare first editions. I understand the lust for these things. For myself I have chosen to focus on the experience of reading and not to collect or focus on the books as objects, but I could easily have been a rabid collector. I therefore really enjoy reading about others who participate in the book world and was looking forward to reading this.

This non-fiction work tells the story of the author tracking down and getting to know John Gilkey, a notorious book thief. While Gilkey goes to great extremes to steel his books, and while both he and the author often proclaim his love for the books, I just never bought it. It seemed to me that Mr. Gilkey was simply a thief with a compulsion but that he had no real love or appreciation for the books. It seemed to me that he could have easily been compulsively steeling jewelry or paintings. As a mere thief and not a true book lover, I felt absolutely no empathy for the man. In addition, I thought the story line was rather dull and it wasn’t very well written.

I would skip this book and read A Gentle Madness or Used and Rare. Of course many people loved it. On Amazon it has 107 reviews with an average rating of 4 out of 5 stars. Carl V. from Stainless Steel Droppings also really enjoyed it.

Sweetness At the Bottom of the Pie

by Alan Bradley

Sometimes you are just in the mood for something light and fun. Eleven year old Flavia de Luce is a little bored rambling around in her English country manner house and doing experiments in her chemistry laboratory. But then she finds a body in the cucumber patch and the police seem to be focusing on her father as the prime suspect so what is she to do but solve the murder herself! This outrageously precocious 11 year old is very entertaining, especially since I listened to this in audio and the narrator, Jayne Entwistle, did a marvelous job with Flavia. While not a great work of literature it was clever and fun and I would not hesitate to read more in this series when in the right mood. For a more detailed review check out Carl V’s at Stainless Steel Droppings.

Master and Margarita

by Mikhail Bulgakov

I have been wanting to read this "masterpiece" for many years about Satan's visit to Stalinist Russia. The story opens with two gentlemen having a lively discussion in a Moscow park about whether or not Jesus actually existed when they are joined in the discussion by a foreigner named Woland (aka Satan). From there the story takes off in crazy and unexpected directions that were thoroughly entertaining. Woland (aka Satan) has come to Moscow with his entourage and causes all sorts of trouble especially for the literary and theatrical communities. In another story line we encounter Pontius Pilate on the day that he meets Yeshua Ha-Nozri (Jesus). I don’t want to give much of the plot away as the madcap twists and turns are part of the fun.

This novel can be read on many different levels. It was written in the 1930s in Stalinist Soviet Union but because of the regime’s repressive control of literary works was not published there until 1963. The novel is in many respects a satire of the bureaucratic control of literature. One of the funniest little vignettes is when Woland makes a literary bureaucrat disappear but his suit remains at his desk working away and signing documents without any disruption to the office. In fact the title character, the Master, is a writer who burns his novel for fear of the problems it will cause him with the bureaucracy. Indeed, most of the characters caught up in Woland’s antics are either writers, poets, the literary trade union MASSOLIT or part of the Variety Theater.

But the novel can also be read simply for fun. The plot is just wild and wacky and I also loved the characters. I especially enjoyed Woland’s entourage which includes Behemoth a mischievous black cat that can take on human form, Koroviev an ex choir master, Azazello a fanged assassin, and Hella a beautiful red headed succubus. My favorite character is Margarita, the Master’s lover, who fully embraces whatever situation she may find herself in. My favorite scenes are when Maragarita agrees to help Woland out and is given extraordinary powers which she uses to take revenge on the literary bureaucrat that she blames for the Master’s troubles before she leaves Moscow to serve as the hostess at Satan’s springtime ball.

I also really enjoyed the fact that the novel does not paint Satan, or any of the characters, as simply good or evil. As Woland says "what would your good do if evil did not exist, and what would the earth look like if shadows disappeared from it?" (p. 360). Good can sometimes come out of evil. For example, Margarita is turned into a witch to host Satan’s ball and in return is given a wish. Instead of asking for something for herself she requests that a women that she has just meet be released from torment. And as we all know, good intentions can often lead to evil, a principle that must have particularly resonated during the Stalinist era.

Apparently this novel has been turned into numerous plays, a movie, a mini series for tv, an opera, a ballet, a graphic novel, a painting and inspiration for songs by Mike Jagger and Pearl Jam. I read this for Carl V’s RIP V challenge and thoroughly enjoyed it. Thanks Carl for hosting a great challenge again. Hopefully next year I will have more time to participate.

2666

by Roberto Bolano

I finished this book in July and it is almost November and I still haven’t written a review of it. Work has been crazy and we went on vacation etc. and I cannot blame this particular book for putting me so far behind in book write ups, but I must admit that I don’t really know what to say about this book. When it first came out it made quite a sensation so of course I immediately bought it. I started reading it in January and read it in the three sections that my book was divided into with other books in between. This is how Publisher’s Weekly described it:

Last year's The Savage Detectives by the late Chilean-Mexican novelist Bolaño (1953–2003) garnered extraordinary sales and critical plaudits for a complex novel in translation, and quickly became the object of a literary cult. This brilliant behemoth is grander in scope, ambition and sheer page count, and translator Wimmer has again done a masterful job. The novel is divided into five parts (Bolaño originally imagined it being published as five books) and begins with the adventures and love affairs of a small group of scholars dedicated to the work of Benno von Archimboldi, a reclusive German novelist. They trace the writer to the Mexican border town of Santa Teresa (read: Juarez), but there the trail runs dry, and it isn't until the final section that readers learn about Benno and why he went to Santa Teresa. The heart of the novel comes in the three middle parts: in The Part About Amalfitano, a professor from Spain moves to Santa Teresa with his beautiful daughter, Rosa, and begins to hear voices. The Part About Fate, the novel's weakest section, concerns Quincy Fate Williams, a black American reporter who is sent to Santa Teresa to cover a prizefight and ends up rescuing Rosa from her gun-toting ex-boyfriend. The Part About the Crimes, the longest and most haunting section, operates on a number of levels: it is a tormented catalogue of women murdered and raped in Santa Teresa; a panorama of the power system that is either covering up for the real criminals with its implausible story that the crimes were all connected to a German national, or too incompetent to find them (or maybe both); and it is a collection of the stories of journalists, cops, murderers, vengeful husbands, prisoners and tourists, among others, presided over by an old woman seer. It is safe to predict that no novel this year will have as powerful an effect on the reader as this one.

blurb from Publisher’s Weekly via Amazon.com.

I am not sure I agree with Publisher Weekly. My favorite parts were the first “The Part About the Critics” which describes the scholars who have devoted their lives to analyzing Archimboldi searching for him in Mexico, and the final “The Part About Archimboldi” where we learn the full life story of the missing author. I thought the first part was extremely funny describing the self absorb scholars and the entire academic world. I also enjoyed the writing style, although some have found it too detailed:

The first conversation began awkwardly, although Espinoza had been expecting Pelletier’s call, as if both men found it difficult to say what sooner or later they would have to say. The first twenty minutes were tragic in tone, with the word fate used ten times and the word friendship twenty-four times. Liz Norton’s name was spoken fifty times, nine of them in vain. The word Paris was said seven times, Madrid, eight. The word love was spoken twice and the word happiness once (by Espinoza). The word solution was said twelve times…The word euphemism ten times…. The words eyes or hands or hair fourteen times.

I thought this was a much more interesting way to convey the gist of the conversation without actually telling us what was said. I also thoroughly enjoyed the long and complicated Archimboldi story.

I found the Part About the Crimes by far the weakest part and had to force myself to get through it. I knew going in that it was going to be lengthy and overwhelming with incident after incident of murder and rape recounted but I had not anticipated that it would be so boring. Far from bringing home the horror of the crimes it simply made me blaise. Or perhaps that was the point, I don’t know. I just kept thinking he needed an editor.

I am glad that I read it but it certainly wasn’t one of my more memorable reads this year (other than the fact that it took up so much of my reading time). I might consider reading the Savage Detectives but am not rushing to do so.

RIP V Challenge

I have been looking forward to Carl V's RIP challenge for a while but work and life have been crazy and I just realized that I haven't actually signed up for it. I have to select Peril the Third which requires one book because I don't think I will be able to do more. I have already started reading The Master and Margarita by Mikail Bulgakov which so far I am enjoying very much. If I get a chance to read more below is a list of some that I would like to read. For information on joining the challenge go here, and for the review site go here.

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova - which has been sitting on my shelf since it came out.
Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination by Edogawa Rampo
Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
Great and Secret Show or Damnation Game by Clive Barker - I loved his Weaveworld.
The Stand by Stephen King - cannot believe that I have never actually read it.
The Terror by Dan Simmons
We Have Always Lived In the Castle by Shirley Jackson - I loved Hill House.
The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe
The Ghost Writer by John Harwood - also been on my shelf since it came out.

Bookmarks

July/August 2010

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen - S
Amsterdam by Ian McEwan - S & L
Feed by Mira Grant - S
Solar by Ian McEwan
The Executor by Jesse Kellerman
The Love we Share Without Knowing by Christopher Barzak
Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz
War by Sebastian Junger - NF
Callapse by Jared Diamond - NF
Erast Petrovich Fandorin series by Boris Akunin
start with The Winter Queen

Books about New York
City of Dreams, City of Glory, City of God by Beverly Swerling
Paradise Alley, Dreamland, Striver's Row by Kevin Baker
New York by Edward Rutherfurd
Queen of Bedlam by Robert McCammon

Japanese Literature Challenge IV

It is time for the Japanese Literature Challenge. For info go here, for reviews go here, and suggestions here. You only need to read one book for the challenge but I have several that I would like to read. I would like to read the following:

Wild Sheep Chase - Murakami
Spring Snow - Yukio Mishima
The Tattoo Murder Case - Akimitsu Takagi
Old Capital - Kawabata
Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination by Edogawa Rampo

I am definitely reading A Wild Sheep Chase as it has been sitting on the coffee table waiting for this challenge to begin. I also already own the Tattoo Murder Case and the Rampo book would be perfect for the RIP challenge in the fall. And of course I am sure my wish list will get much longer as I read everybody's reviews. I see that there are already 40 reviews posted! Sorry I am late.

Once Upon A Time IV Wrap Up

I had signed up for the journey to give myself flexibility and I ended up reading four books.

Shriek
The Other City
Invisible Cities
Pale Fire

It is hard to pick a favorite as they are all so different and all enjoyable. I absolutely loved Shriek and it's fascinating mushroom plagued city of Ambergris and am looking forward to the next in the series, Finch. Invisible Cities was less a novel and more an experience which I thoroughly enjoyed. Pale Fire, which purports to be a poem and critical commentary, was a fun and witty novel. I really enjoyed them all.

Thanks for hosting another fun challenge Carl!

Pale Fire

by Vladimir Nabokov

I began hearing about Pale Fire when I read House of Leaves in 2000 (and it is hard to believe that that was 10 years ago). Like House of Leaves, Pale Fire plays with the structure of the text and often is cited as an important example of early metafiction and hypertext. This novel written by Vladimir Nabokov (of Lolita fame), published in 1962, purports to be a 999 line poem written by poet John Shade and critical analysis of the poem in a forward and lengthy end notes by Charles Kinbote. Although the critical analysis is supposedly about the poem, it mainly provides the story of Kinbote, his supposed friendship (which comes across more as stalking) with next door neighbor John Shade, and the travails, exploits and adventures of the deposed king of the kingdom of Zembla.

I guess because I heard about this book primarily in relationship to its unusual structure and often described as difficult but important (#53 on Modern Library's 100 Best Novels), I was very pleasantly surprised to find that the story and the characters were a lot of fun. I loved that the narrator, Kinbote, could clearly not be trusted and the way he tried to insert his story of Zembla into the poem. I enjoyed the escapades of the zany king of Zembla and the frightening assassin Gradus. I appreciated the commentary on the academic life of a small New England college and its professors.

At first I tried to go back and forth between the poem and the notes but I quickly decided to read the poem through and then read the notes through, returning to the poem text once in a while. It could be read either way. Indeed, as evidenced by the many decades it has been studied and the numerous critical books and essays it has engendered, it could be read numerous times and still give the readers something new each time.

Although it is clear that the narrator cannot be trusted, it is unclear how to interpret the rest of the story. Did John Shade write both the poem and the commentary creating Kinbote as a character? Is John Shade a figure of Kinbote's imagination? Is Kinbote sane? Are his stories of Zembla and the assassin Gradus real?

I highly recommend this book. While you could spend years analyzing it, you can also simply enjoy it as a funny, witty, beautifully written story.

Invisible Cities

by Italo Calvino

Since I just finished reading the Other City and wanted to read some Calvino I thought this one would be perfect. Invisible Cities is even less of a novel than the Other City. The premise is that Marco Polo is telling Kublai Khan about the places he has visited in his travels. The entries are very short and are mostly one or two page descriptions of cities interspersed occasionally with a page or two of conversation between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan. Each entry is designated a specific type: Cities and Memory, Cities and Signs, Cities and Desire, Thin Cities, Cities and the Dead, Continuous Cities, Hidden Cities etc. I know it sounds strange, without any real plot or characters, just a book describing cities, but I absolutely loved it. The writing was beautiful and it was such a pleasure to dip into these little vignettes of cities.

Since I could never adequately explain this work or Calvino's beautiful prose and since they are so short I could not resist including one in its entirety: Cities and Desire #4.

In the center of Fedora, that gray stone metropolis, stands a metal building with a crystal globe in every room. Looking into each globe, you see a blue city, the model of a different Fedora. These are the forms the city could have taken if, for one reason or another, it had not become what we see today. In every age someone, looking at Fedora as it was, imagined a way of making it the ideal city, but while he constructed his miniature model, Fedora was already no longer the same as before, and what had been until yesterday a possible future became only a toy in a glass globe.

The building with the globes is now Fedora's museum: every inhabitant visits it, chooses the city that corresponds to his desires, contemplates it, imagining his reflection in the medusa pond that would have collected the waters of the canal (if it had not been dried up), the view from the high canopied box along the avenue reserved for elephants (now banished from the city), the fun sliding down the spiral twisting minaret (which never found a pedestal from which to rise).

On the map of your empire, O Great Khan, there must be room both for the big, stone Fedora and the little Fedoras in glass globes. Not because they are all equally real, but because all are only assumptions. The one contains what is accepted as necessary when it is not yet so; the others, what is imagined as possible and, a moment later is possible no longer.

Here are some descriptions of more of my favorites.

• The city with no walls, no ceilings, no floors, just "water pipes that rise vertically where the houses should be and spread out horizontally where the floors should be: a forest of pipes that end in taps, showers, spouts, overflows." Thin Cities #3.

• The city made up of two half cities, one permanent, one temporary, one a circus, one made of marble, stone and cement with factories, banks, schools. Each year the the marble, stone and cement city is loaded into its caravan to continue its itinerary. Thin Cities #4.

• The city whose inhabitants all move onto a new city periodically and take on new jobs, new spouses, new hobbies and yet the city remains always the same. Trading Cities #3.

• The spider web city built hanging down from a net over a chasm. Thin Cities #5

• The city which has built an exact copy of itself below ground for their dead. Cities and the Dead # 3.
  

I also enjoyed the discussions between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan.

Polo: Perhaps this garden exist only in the shadow of our lowered eyelids, and we have never stopped: you, from raiding dust on the fields of battle; and I, from bargaining for sacks of pepper in distant bazaars. But each time we half-close our eyes, in the midst of the din and the throng, we are allowed to withdraw here, dressed in silk kimonos, to ponder what we are seeing and living, to draw conclusions, to contemplate from the distance.

Kublai: Perhaps this dialogue of ours is taking place between two beggars nicknamed Kublai Khan and Marco Polo; as they shift through a rubbish heap, piling up rusted flotsam, scraps of cloth, wastepaper, while drunk on the few sips of bad wine, they see all the treasure of the East shine around them.

Polo: Perhaps all that is left of the world is wasteland covered in rubbish heaps, and the hanging garden of the Great Khan's palace. It is our eyelids that separate them, but we cannot know which is inside and which is outside.

No description could do this book justice. Just read it.

I read this for Once Upon A Time IV.

The Other City

by Michal Ajvaz

I had never heard of this book until I saw it on Jeff VanderMeer's Best of 2009 list and read his review for Omnivoracious.

In this strange and lovely hymn to Prague, Michal Ajaz repopulates the city of Kafka with ghosts, eccentrics, talking animals, and impossible statutes, all lurking on the peripheries of a town so familiar to tourists. The Other City is a guidebook to this invisible other Prague, overlapping the workaday world: a place where libraries can turn into jungles, secret passages yawn beneath our feet and waves lap at our bedspreads. Heir to the tradition and obsessions of Jorge Luis Borges, as well as the long and distinguished line of Czech fantasists, Ajvaz's The Other City - his first novel to be translated into English - brings to light all the worlds we are blind to, being caught in our own ways of seeing.

Blurb from the back of the book.

I admit that mention of Borges and Kafka, two of my favorite authors, had me intrigued. And then I read the opening paragraph:

I was walking up and down rows of books at the antiquarian bookseller's in Karlova Street. Now and then I would take a look out the shop window. It started to snow heavily; holding a book in my hand I watched the snowflakes swirl in front of the wall of St. Saviour's Church. I returned to my book, savoring its aroma and allowing my eyes to flit over its pages, reading here and there the fragment of a sentence that suddenly sparkled mysteriously because it was taken out of context. I was in no hurry; I was happy to be in a room that smelled pleasantly of old books, where it was warm and quiet, where the pages rustled as they turned, as if the books were sighing in their sleep. I was glad I didn't have to go out into the darkness and the snowstorm.

I was hooked. In that cozy bookshop with the books sighing in their sleep the protagonist finds a strange red velvet book in a writing that he does not know which leads him to discover a city that he never realized was there, a city that exists in the dark neglected corners and on the edges of the city he knows. The Other City is not strong on plot or character development Indeed, the Complete Review complained that it was almost all atmosphere with little purpose. I have to admit I did not love it as much as I had hoped to. On the other hand, some of the imagery was breath taking and has stayed with me long after I finished reading it. I loved the concept that we live our daily lives seeing what we expect to see and not noticing what exactly is in the shadows and neglected corners. I loved the overlap of this other world and our everyday world.

"There's a tension in The Other City between the fanciful and the baroque, the cleverly odd and the deeply odd, that makes the novel work. It's the kind of book you let wash over you in waves--episodic, funny but not too silly, and marked by a first-class imagination." Jeff VanderMeer. I agree that you need to let the book simply "wash over you" and let your imagination take you away. Indeed, it is more of an experience than a novel.

"What will we do?" the girl said. "We'll never reach the island now. We'll never walk along the white promenades or sit on a terrace above the sea ..."
"It doesn't matter," her friend replied. "It is better this way. We'll imagine it all, and it'll be much more beautiful. Every day we'll dream up excursions, games in gleaming pools, splendid parties with lanterns, flirting with interesting people, dancing at night on the decks of yachts. We're not so dull as to need reality ..."
p. 140-141.

I hope I am not so dull as to need reality, at least not all the time.

I had hoped to read China Meiville's The City and the City along with this as the two books have been compared quite often, but alas, my Kindle with my copy of it is still shanghaied by my husband. The Other City is definitely not for everyone, but I found it intriguing.

I read this for Once Upon A Time Challenge and Speculative Fiction Challenge.

Bookmarks

Here's what looked interesting in the May/June Bookmarks Magazine.

Tell All, Chuck Palahniuk - S
Sleepless, Charlie Huston - S
Horns, Joe Hill - S
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornett's Nest, Stieg Larsson - S
Innocent, Scott Turrow - S
Solar, Ian McEwan - S
The Big Short - NF - S

Spies of the Balkans, Alan Furst
Terminal World, Alastair Reynolds - SF
Kraken, China Mieville - SF
Age of Wonder, Richard Holmes -NF
Fordlandia, Greg Grandin - NF
The House at Sugar Beach, Helene Cooper
Forever, Pete Hamill
Lost Books of the Odyssey, Zachary Mason
The Girl Who Fell From the Sky, Heidi W. Durrow
The Information Officer, Mark Mills
The Savage Garden, Mark Mills
This Book is Overdue!, Marilyn Johnson - NF
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot - NF

Shriek: An Afterward

by Jeff VanderMeer

This is the second book set in VanderMeer's wonderful city of Ambergris. I just adored City of Saints and Madmen. While I think you could dive right into this book and still enjoy it, I would recommend you start with City which not only sets the stage for Ambergris but includes many of the same characters and events relevant to Shriek. Unlike City, which is a collection of short stories, letters, pamphlets and scholarly articles, Shriek is written in a more typical novel format. The book supposedly is a manuscript written by Janice Shriek, a former art dealer, about the life of her brother Duncan Shriek, a former historian. It includes editorial comments by her brother inserted in the text in brackets. But it is more than a story of the rise and fall of these two fascinating siblings. Through the story of the Shrieks it gives a detailed picture of an entire generation of the inhabitants of the city of Ambergris, from its cultural and academic life, to its descent into war, to its mysterious underground populated with the gray caps and their fascinating fungus. Ambergris is richly imagined and VanderMeer's wonderful prose makes it unforgettable. Although a dark mysterious and dangerous city, Ambergris is one of the most intriguing imaginary locals I have ever encountered.

The story of Ambergris is continued in VanderMeer's new book, Finch, which has been nominated for a Nebula award. Although I bought it as soon as it came out , I think I will hold of reading it for a while so I can savor Shriek. My understanding is that it is a novel cast as a noir detective story which takes place a century ofter Shriek when the grey caps have come to power. It has gotten good reviews : here is one from Carl V.

I read this for Once Upon A Time, Mind Voyages and Speculative Fiction Challenge.