Dark River

by John Twelve Hawks

This is Book 2 of the Fourth Realm Trilogy. I read the first book, the Traveler, when it first came out in 2005. Set in the present day, an evil organization is developing more and more sophisticated ways to track all movements and activities of the population. From credit card and banking transactions, to surveillance cameras on the streets, tickets purchased, web sites visited, and phone calls made, the Tabula is tracking your every movement. The first book was about a Traveler - a person with the ability to travel to "other realms" and a Harlequin, a sword carrying protector of travelers and their pursuit by the Tabula. I thought it was an interesting premise and it was written as an exciting thriller. While I didn't think it quite lived up to all the hype, I did enjoy it and was interested in reading more.

The second book, Dark River, picks up were the first one left off. The Tabula is working furiously to achieve total control of the population. Two brothers search for their legendary Traveler father, one brother working for the Tabula and one hiding from the Tabula, living off the grid and protected by the young Harlequin Maya. While this was clearly a middle novel and could not be read on its own, it did make me interested to continue following the adventure and read the next book The Golden City.

Winter's Tale

by Mark Helprin

I first read this in the 80s shortly after it first came out. I rarely re-read books but this one really stuck with me all these years and I am glad that I finally re-read it. On a second reading it certainly did not disappoint! And while I remembered some sections vividly, there was a lot that I did not remember which made for an interesting read.

Winter's Tale is very difficult to describe. Superficially the story is about a burglar who falls in love with a young dying heiress when he breaks into her mansion. But that is just what gets the story going. In my mind the main character is the mythical New York City that Helprin creates which seems to always be enfolded in winter and threatened by a cloud wall. We experience almost a century of the city from the days of sailing ships, horse drawn carriages and cobblestone streets to the modernization of electric lights, mighty bridges and printing presses. There is a small upstate town which is not on any map and usually cannot be found, a white horse that can seemingly fly, and an epic struggle to build bridges.

The writing is spectacular and I could vividly picture flying up the frozen Hudson river in a sleigh under piles of fur, hiding in the lighted constellation ceiling of Grand Central Station or skulking through the sewers with the Short Tails gang of Five Points. While this is definitely fantasy it is not elf and dragon sort of fantasy but rather a look at turn of the century New York as a wondrous and romanticized place that you wish it had been. And you don't have to have ever been to New York or even like New York to enjoy this book. One of my favorite books of all time. Read it!

Reading Deliberately 2011

Last January I decided to try and read more deliberately. I believe the quality of the books that I read in 2010 was much higher than in 2009. I think this is in part due to my leaving my real world book club (and therefore cutting out books I didn't really want to read) but also reading some great books that I have intended to read for a long time but never seemed to get to. I therefore am going to try it again this year.

Books I intended to read in 2010 and still intend to read in 2011:

Gold Bug Variation by Richard Powers
The Castle by Franz Kafka
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
Lost City of Z by David Grann (nonfiction)

There are also books that I have that would be perfect for challenges that I intend to participate in:

Finch by Jeff Vandermeer - Once Upon a Time
The City and the City by China Mieville - Once Upon a Time
Historian by Elizabeth Kostova - RIP

In addition I would like to read a book about Art, a book about Food, a book about Books or Reading, a nonfiction book as well as something from the Modern Library's 100 Best Novels List which I am extremely slowly working through (The Sound and the Fury is on it).

This is a shorter list than last year but perhaps I can complete it this year and I reserve the right to add to it as I am sure I am leaving something important out.

2010 Year in Review

I cannot believe that 2010 went by so quickly. At the beginning of 2010 I decided to read a little more deliberately. While I did not achieve all my goals I did make significant progress and had a good reading year over all, especially as it included some really great books.

My five favorite books from 2010:

Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin
Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

It was very hard to narrow it down to only five, especially since I really loved all of my honorable mentions below. It didn't make any sense to me however to pick 11 favorites since I only read 26 books this year. I guess it goes to show that I had a very successful reading year at least in terms of quality!

Honorable Mention:
Shriek
The Other City
New York Trilogy
A Wild Sheep Chase
Brasyl
Housekeeper and the Professor

Reading Achievements for 2010:
I read twenty six books, which does not compare to most book bloggers but I am quite happy with that number as it is one more than last year and I expected to have read less as it was an especially hectic year for work and life. Of the ten books that I intended to read in 2010 I managed to read half of them, which isn't bad. Of the seven that I had on my shelves that I intended to read for challenges I only read three of them. Indeed, I didn't do very well with Challenges in 2010. I completed the Sci Fi Experience (3 books read), Once Upon A Time (4 books read), RIP (1 book read) and Japanese Literature (1 book read) but dropped out of the Speculative Fiction Challenge and Mind Voyages. I did manage to read two books related to art (The Savage Garden and My Name is Red) and one book about books (The Man Who Loved Books Too Much). I am way behind in writing reviews and need to get better about that, especially since my main goal in having this blog is to replace my physical reading diary.

Statistics:

Although some of the books could fall into more than one category for the purposes of this list I only assigned one category for each book.

Nonfiction - 2

Science Fiction - 3

Horror - 0

Fantasy - 4

Mystery - 3

Literary - 9

Thriller - 3

Other - 1

Female authors - 5

Male authors - 21

New to me authors - 15

Audiobooks - 10
Ebooks - 4

I was surprised that I listened to more audio books than ebooks but since my husband has returned my Kindle to me I bet that ebooks will increase in 2011.

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.