BOOK: Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto

Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto, 150 pages

Japanese Literature Challenge; 1% Well Read

Actually two stories, Kitchen, a novella and Moonlight Shadow, a short story, this book was less dreary than you'd expect for two stories all about grief.
I preferred Moonlight Shadow with its touch of supernatural to help the young girl deal with the death of her boyfriend. The story was simpler but touched me a bit more.
Kitchen is the story of two young adults who come together in their shared grief of what seems like the death of everyone around them. I found this story a bit more abstract with the relationships. It's hard to know when the problems in a story are with the translations. There were some nice phrases and images however.

In the uncertain ebb and flow of time and emotions, much of one's life history is etched in the senses. page 75

BOOK: Fifth Business by Robertson Davies

Fifth Business by Robertson Davies, 238 pages

Celebrate the Author; 1% Well-Read; 3rd Canadian Book Challenge

An epic-type story of the twentieth century. Three men from the same small town in Ontario grow up to various levels of fame, with intersecting lives. The narrator, Dunstan Ramsey, is a private school history teacher with an interest in saints, contrary to his Presbyterian upbringing. He maintains a close friendship with the boy-wonder, Boy Staunton, master of industry, but they share an event from their childhood that forever affected Dunstan. Paul Dempster ran away to join the circus, and then there is a mysterious death at the end when they all meet up again....

(I feel like I could write this summary and make it sound like a Sidney Sheldon novel, but the book only slightly felt that way. It has much larger literary asperations and feel, but I could completely go that way if I wanted.)

I was a little disappointed with the book, because I had very high hopes and instead it felt like those books I read in the 1980s, like Bloodlines or Lace. It never got as tawdry or elaborate, but it was headed in that direction. It just felt a little dated to me, and not just because of the cover of my edition. There was a John Irving feel, like Garp, in some ways. The connection between the characters, the power and money that was evident, the single event from childhood forever linking the characters. Since this was published in 1970, it may have been the originator of this type of story. It's like watching Casablanca for the first time and knowing all the lines anyway - you know you've read all this before, but it's not cliche because it started it all.

This is the first of the Deptford trilogy but I'm not running out to find them. Maybe in a few weeks or months the story will still be with me and I'll be wanting to find out what happened with Boy and Dunstan and that mysterious death at the end. If so, I'll look up the next book, but I think I'd rather reread an old Sidney Sheldon.

other reviews, from some real fans of Davies:
court at Once Upon a bookshelf;
bybee at Naked Without Books

BOOK: Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels

Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels, 294 pages

Orange Prize Winner; 1% well read

Very poetic, beautiful language, I enjoyed reading it even if I didn't necessarily know what was going on. It's not really a good sign if you have to check wikipedia or sparknotes after finishing a book to find out what exactly happened. I guess the main idea is about survivors and the guilt they live with. I liked the first section in the story of Jakob but was completely bewildered in the second section. Who was the narrator now?

The orphaned Jakob is taken in by Athos, a paleonbiologist, providing metaphors about unearthing things and looking below layers, and the fact that there can be a whole world buried beneath us that we can't see. They arrive in Canada from Greece each with a past they are trying to deal with.

I couldn't turn my anguish from the precise moment of death. I was focused on that historical split second: the tableau of the haunting trinity - perpetrator, victim, witness.
But at what moment does wood become stone, peat become coal, limestone become marble? The gradual instant.

I wasn't expecting a book about world war two, and I didn't realize that the Germans were in Greece too. Their reach was far and the after effects many, sometimes lasting generations.

But each time a memory or story slinks away, it takes more of me with it.

I'm not a fan of books told in metaphors, but this book is highly honored - Orange Prize Winner of 1997, so for the more literate of you, I recommend. And to be clear, I enjoyed reading the words, even if I didn't really understand the story, and I saw all the references as they floated over my head, I just didn't catch them. And yet, it was compelling and beautiful.

Here's the back cover testimonial:
Sensual, vivid, utterly spellbinding, Fugitive Pieces is a novel about loss, the process of memory, and the redemptive powers of love, which resonates long after the final page.

BOOK: Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 348 pages

Orbis Terrarum: Colombia; What's in a Name: medical condition; 1% well read; Latin American Challenge

Fiction or non-fiction? Genre?
fiction; it's described as a romance at Sparknotes which I'm not sure I agree with but I'll discuss that later


What led you to pick up this book?
It's a book I've heard of in many contexts: it's an Oprah pick from a few years ago, it makes many book lists of important books, Marquez is a Nobel winning author, and it seemed like a definitive book to read for the Latin American Challenge. Marquez's other book, One Hundred Years of Solitude has more polarizing reviews and I've seen a few reviews for this one that made me think it would be a better fit for me.

Summarize the plot, but don't give away the ending!
Florentino Ariza falls in love with Fermina Daza when they are teenagers. She ends up rejecting him and marrying a doctor and Florentino Ariza swears his undying love. Fifty-one years and 622 affairs later, he gets his chance to proclaim his love to Fermina Daza again.

What did you like most about the book?

I liked the setting and the time period - turn of the last century in some unknown Caribbean location. I was interested in seeing how the two main characters would end up together at the end.
At times the writing was lyrical and would lull me along with the story, but at other times I would read a paragraph twice to understand what was being described.
I liked Fermina Daza as a character. She seemed very strong, and opinionated in a time when women were not treated very well. She survived on her own terms for the most part and the men in her life dominated her only in the ways she let them.

What did you like least?
I didn't like that the chapters had no breaks within them. Fifty to seventy pages written with no pause, changing from character to character and from one back story to another.

I didn't like the details for minor characters that would appear for several paragraphs and then not appear again, mostly in describing Florentino Ariza's lovers.

The theme of love as a plague, a sickness didn't resonate with me. I thought Florentino wasn't really in love with Fermina, rather he saw her as some ideal that he had to possess. He never really knew her and by the time he got to know her, she wasn't the same person at all that he originally fell in love with. He could better be described as a stalker, watching her from a far, waiting and setting up situations for them to meet.

The depiction of aging as the Worst Thing Ever. The first character in the book, a friend of the doctor's kills himself rather than get too old; Fermina's daughter at one point proclaims that seventy year olds making love is 'disgusting.' The description of Fermina naked when she was seventy was not at all flattering and was used to show that women do not age gracefully, where as the male was not so graphically described - he just couldn't get it up after seeing her.

Have you read any other books by this author? What did you think of those books?
No, and I think I won't need to.

What did you think of the main character?
Florentino Ariza was a nymphomaniac who justified his use of women as 'being true' to his one true love, Fermina Daza. He treated women as objects and kept a record of his conquests. One of his 'lovers' was fourteen and under his care as her guardian. When Humbert Humbert did that in Lolita he was a pedophile, but Florentino is never judged for it.

Any other particularly interesting characters?
Some of Florentino Ariza's lovers were interesting but they began to run into each other in my mind.
I liked Fermina's cousin, Hildebrande, who had her own love problems and tried to provide opportunities to get Florentina and Fermina together when they were young.

Share a quote from the book:
I seldom notice quotes from a book. Random page opening found this example of the writing:

He had to repress the trembling that was almost as old as he was when he saw the beautiful woman of his dreams on her husband's arm, splendid in her maturity, striding like a queen from another time past the honor guard in parade uniform, under the the shower of paper streamers and flower petals tossed at them from the windows.

Share a favorite scene from the book.
I liked the boat ride near the end of the book for it's discussion about how the environment had been destroyed by the progress of various river enterprises, but this little sermon came out of nowhere and seemed like a big idea to discuss that hadn't been mentioned at all.

What about the ending?

It was okay, but the ending happened at the beginning and then the rest of the book shows how we ended up there. It wasn't my type of love story.

Anything else?
The narration was third person omniscient, but a couple of times there was reference to 'us' or 'our' as a citizen of the country, which really threw me. And at another point, the narrator made mention to his/her being a namesake to a character. But there was never anything else mentioned about that. I kept reading partially to find out what that was about and I checked Sparknotes for some reference, but there was nothing there either. Very weird.

Which of your readers are most likely to enjoy this book? Why?

People who like Oprah recommended books. Readers who enjoy Nobel winning author books. Fans of Latin America writing.

Other reviews around the book blogosphere:
Rhinoa,
bybee,
chris at book-a-rama,
susan b evans at well-mannered frivolity,

CHALLENGE: 1% Well Read, 2009 Version

How much of a glutton for punishment am I? As of February 28, 2009, I didn't complete this challenge from last year. I read 7 out of 10, and one of those was a DNF. Not very impressive. But there are still books on the list I'd like to read, and nothing actually happened when I didn't complete the challenge, so why not give it a try?

Michelle has given us three options for this challenge:

1. Read 10 titles from the original list from March 1, 2009 through December 31, 2009.
2. Read 10 titles from the new list from March 1, 2009 through December 31, 2009.
3. Read 13 titles from the combined list (of almost 1300 titles) from March 1, 2009 through March 31, 2010. In other words, “What were they thinking dropping titles from Dostoevsky and Jane Austen?”

I'll go with option number 2, and begin a list here:

1. Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (new list)
2. All the Pretty Horses - Cormac McCarthy (new list) - read 50 pages
3. Fugitive Pieces - Anne Michaels April 27 (both lists)
4. Fifth Business - Robertson Davies (new list)
5. The Reader - Bernhard Schlink (both lists)
6. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain dailylit.com (both lists)
7. The Tenent of Wildfell Hall - Anne Bronte
8. Kitchen - Banana Yoshimoto (new list)
9. The Bridal Wreath (book 1 of Kristin Lavransdatter) - Sigrid Unset
10. Cranford - Elizabeth Gaskell (both lists)

3. Vernon God Little - DBC Pierre (new list)
5. How Late it Was, How Late - James Kelman (both lists)
8. The Diviners - Margaret Laurence (new list)

11. The Colour - Rose Tremain (old list)
12. Fingersmith - Sarah Waters (old list)
13. The Yellow Wallpaper - Charlotte Perkins Gilman

BOOK: Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, 509 pages

tbr lite, 1% well read


Six stories, stacked within each other like Russian dolls, through time past and present. Or six movements of a musical composition, with connecting themes and overlapping characters. The overall idea and execution of Mitchell's novel worked better for me than the individual pieces. I preferred some stories and characters and writing to others. But the idea that he develops is quite amazing. As the music is described in one section: In the first set, each solo is interrupted by its successor; in the second, each interruption is recontinued, in order. Revolutionary or gimmicky?
Exactly.

There were parts of each that I really liked. From Adam Ewing's diary, I enjoyed the musings on social strata among the races and why some people were conquered. A little history from the Southern Pacific Chatham Islands was interesting. From the Letters from Zedelghem, I liked the connection of characters to Black Swan Green, another book of Mitchell's I enjoyed. Luisa Rey's Mystery was a good old fashioned mystery with espionage and adventure.

The writing in Timothy Cavendish's Ghastly Ordeal was the easiest to read but the story was not as interesting." The Orison of Sonmi-451" was my favorite story. Set in a futuristic corpocracy in Korea, a breakdown in this dystopian world is investigated. The use of words and ideas extended from now to this imagined future was pretty cool. "Sloosh'a Crossin' An' Ev'rythin' After" was the center story, the smallest Russian doll of the book. It was toughest to read with the dialect and bastardization of the English language, and although it slowed me down, it was very well done. Trying to see how it connected to the rest was the best part of this story.

This was nominated for the Man Booker Prize in 2004 and I am surprised it didn't win, if only for the imaginative and ambitious writing. It is such a different book, and while I didn't love it, it will stay with me for a while, thinking of the connections and way the stories layered.

BOOK: Amsterdam by Ian McEwan

Amsterdam by Ian McEwan, 194 pages

book awards: Booker 1998; 1% well read



With friends like these guys, who needs enemies? A composer and a newspaper editor, both former lovers of a recently deceased woman, are neither very likable characters. They are both a little thrown by her death, and both face some professional challenges, but try to rely on each other.

I read the book with interest but with a very detached view. I wanted to see what happened, and there were some good plot twists but if it had been a longer book, I don't know how invested I would have remained. The writing is lovely, with impassioned descriptions of the music of the symphony and some philosophical discussions of the role of newspapers in scandals but these guys were so self-centered and lonely that it was hard to care what happened to them. I'm not sure why this would be a Booker winner; it was well written and makes some comments (not completely sure what they would be, - tempermental artists? office politics? the role of art in society? but I'm sure they are there) but it's not a book I'd rave about. I much preferred his Atonement book as I cared about the characters and could identify with the dilemmas. The more I think about it, the more I think these guys were just asses.

BOOK: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, 189 pages

1% Well Read; Decades Challenge: 1930s; unread author

I am putting this one down half read. It's not that I hate it, it's just that I don't care. It has put me in a reading funk in that I was trying to finish it, but could hardly read it and I wouldn't start another book since I wanted to get through this one. I read Montmorency in one evening when I picked it up for a change, which told me that I just was not going to finish Their Eyes Were Watching God. I slogged as far as I could (90 pages) hoping I would get into it, but alas, no.

Like many of you, I find it hard to stop reading a book. This one is a classics for pete's sake. But, I stopped after Janie's second husband died. The book starts with the end, so I know how it ends. I found it too hard to read the accent phonetically- it slowed me down too much and when I slowed down, I didn't care for the story. Some books expose you to a life different from your own experience and it is a good thing, but I really couldn't relate. I wasn't feeling Janie's emotions enough to want to find out what happened to her. I think the book is somewhat detached in that way so it can demonstrate and record the experience of African Americans after slavery. I've been reading some analysis of it and other book reviews, so I understand the significance of parts and the jist of the plot, ie, I think I could pass a test on it in school if I needed to .

I'm still counting it in my challenges as it took up a week of my reading life and I was exposed to a new author and it was from the decade of the 1930s. Whew, that feels good to make that decision. Next book please.

BOOK: A Pale View of Hills by Kazou Ishiguro

A Pale View of Hills by Kazou Ishiguro, 183 pages

1% well read, Japanese literature challenge

I'm fudging things a bit to use this for the Japanese literature challenge, as although Ishiguro was born in Japan, he moved to England as a young child. This book does take place for the most part in Japan, so I am going to count it.

The first novel written by Ishiguro has his signature beautiful writing. His writing matches the way my head thinks, so I find his writing very easy to get absorbed into. His sparse style tells so much more than you would expect. There isn't much in the line of plot here - Etsuko's younger daughter arrives at her English countryside cottage after the suicide of Keiko, the elder daughter. The mother is sent into a remembrance of a particular time of her life in Nagasaki, newly married after the war and the bomb and a friendship with an unusual neighbour in the months before her daughter is born. The neighbour, Sachiko and her young daughter Mariko are preparing to leave Japan with Sachiko's American boyfriend. For some reason, this time was important to Etsuko, even though other important information about her life and how she ended up in England with a different husband is never really told.

I enjoyed this slow meandering read and the view of life in Japan as life was changing there after the war. I wasn't always clear what the characters were about and their interactions, but an interesting passage near the end had me sitting up and rereading a page or so and blinking my eyes. Ishiguro is a great writer, and this book would be interesting for a group read, as there are some interpretations required to decide upon at the end.

BOOK: The Plague by Albert Camus

The Plague by Albert Camus

African Reading Challenge: Algeria; 1% Well Read

What are my impressions after reading this book? It's a classic, so that comes with a bunch of preconceived notions for me, which is layers, messages, and deep. Usually I don't like classics because they are deep, with hidden messages and layers. For some reason though, I kind of like Camus.

Camus tells a story about a town in Algeria, Oran which becomes infested and then isolated, with the bubonic plague. There are a bunch of characters that I had a hard time keeping straight, so they each probably represent a different philosophy. At some point, I thought that there must be some analogy to world war two, and my reading after confirmed this inkling. The German invasion and occupation of France is the parallel. What makes Camus an interesting read for me is that the plot and story at its lowest level is still interesting, but I can recognize and still even enjoy the other level. The characters are facing difficult situations all in their own way and there are philosophical discussions going on that I somewhat skim over.

The Plague tells a great story and has levels for some readers who like that stuff. Camus is a Nobel Winning author who writes in a very accessible style.

Isn't that an awful cover I have? I bought this at a used book sale, but it just screams Important Book!

BOOK: Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

African Reading Challenge; Orbis Terrarum: Nigeria; 1% Well Read Challenge; decades challenge: 1950s

I've been wanting to read this book for a long time, so I kept putting it on another challenge list, hoping to finally get around to it. It gets scary when one book is on so many challenges, because what if I don't like it? I finally read it, appropriately enough during a wonderful heat spell, helping me get into the mood for a story set in 1890s Nigeria, in the African jungle. It took a while to get into the style of the writing but once I did I felt rewarded with a wonderful look at life in an African village.

The story follows Okonkwo, a leader and warrior in his local village, and his family. For the first third, the plot is just explaining the family and the lifestyle and sets up the pivotal point in the story. This is also about the influx of the British and the effect of the Christian missionaries on the tribes. Achebe does a great job of using a small family and village to see how the clashes occurred between the two groups which sets up the colonial situation in Africa which still has repercussions today. By the time the ending came with the inevitable showdown, I felt so bad for how the situation had deteriorated. As usual, there were good people on both sides but they were never enough.

Okonkwo was a flawed character to focus the book on. Even within his village, he was aggressive and violent and impatient with people he determined were less than him. I found it hard to like him and yet he was determined and smart and a leader. Even though life in the village of Umuofia was so far removed from my own, it helped to show me how that culture conflicted so much with the British who arrived. There is another novel, No Longer At Ease that I will have to look into that follows one of Okonkwo's descendants. I am going to look for it because this was a very good book and I would like to read another one of Achebe's African novels.

CHALLENGE: 1% Reading Challenge

3M is hosting a new challenge. This doesn't even feel like a challenge because I use this list in the back of my mind when I'm picking books for reading challenges. I read 27 from this list last year. I imagine most books will be cross-listed with other reading challenges. Here's the intro from 3m's blog:

The goal of this challenge is to read 10 books in 10 months from the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die list. For you non-math people, 10 out of 1001 is approximately 1%, hence the title. The challenge will run from May 1, 2008 through February 28, 2009.

I'll list a few books I am hoping to get to soon:

1. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
2. Amsterdam - Ian McEwan
3. The Stone Diaries - Carol Shields
4. A Bend in the River - Naipaul
5. The Plague - Albert Camus
6. something by Vonnegut
7. Things Fall Apart - Achebe
8. Family Matters - Rohinton Mistry
9. A Pale View of Hills by Kazou Ishiguro
10. Oranges are Not the Only Fruit - Winterson
11. Corelli's Mandolin - Louis de Bernieres
12. Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Huston Neal
13. Isabelle Allende - House of Spirits
14. The Colour - Rose Tremain
15. Love in the Time of Cholera
16. The Reader

It's hard to make a list, from a list, and this may well change.