Lanzarote

If Michel Houellebecq can publish a book of 84 pages I can publish a 5 word review of it : A lot like Platform only shorter.

The Infamous Proust Questionnaire

In the back pages of Vanity Fair each month, readers find The Proust Questionnaire, a series of questions posed to famous subjects about their lives, thoughts, values and experience. A regular reference to Proust in such a major publication struck me as remarkable, and it was only until I'd read Andre Maurois's Proust: Portrait of a Genius that I understood what this was all about. Read The Infamous Proust Questionnaire.

Via The French Journal

One Last Look

Susanna Moore's latest book, One Last Look, is a work of historical fiction, a genre I generally avoid like the plague. If I had avoided it I would have missed a wonderful reading experience. Moore has set this novel in India in the 1830's. Eleanor and Harriet Oliphant accompany their brother, Henry (with whom Eleanor has a complicated relationship), who has been appointed Governor General of the colony. It is Eleanor's voice telling the story through her diary.
Their voyage to India is long and rough; one gets seasick reading about it. The family arrives at their new home where their every need is met by a legion of native servants. At one point Eleanor almost loses the power to walk because she is carried about, seldom setting her satin slippered feet to ground. She and Harriet are clothed in the finest gowns and shoes from England, Moore's descriptions of the outfits are beautifully descriptive. The women receive luxurious gifts from rajahs and dignitaries. They make pets of deer, gazelles and flying squirrels and also have their own private zoo. There are balls and tableaux vivants but life is not all a bed of roses for the Oliphant siblings. The climate is oppressive with smothering heat and monsoons. Their social life is rigidly arranged and they are obliged to spend time with folks they wouldn't have given the time of day to back in England. Disease, insects, death and loss are pervasive. Henry faces tremendous challenges in his role as GG and is ultimately, after a lengthy and arduous trek across the country with an entourage of 12,000 during which he makes some fatal political decisions, proven to be unfit for the job.
Moore draws on the written materials of real life sisters Emily and Fanny Eden, who accompanied their brother George when he was sent to Calcutta as Governor General in 1836, and also on Fannie Parks, the wife of a civil servant. This story of the grandeur and the squalor of India rings absolutely true. Moore's sensually evocative writing presents us with a very real colonial India, one which we can see, smell and taste.
This book is a chronology of the metamorphosis the characters undergo as a result of their immersion in the tumultuous cauldron that is colonial India. The Oliphants who leave India in 1842 are a far cry from the three who arrived in 1836.
This a beautiful, elegant and informative book and I'm glad I read it.

Why Women Read More Than Men

A couple of years ago, British author Ian McEwan conducted an admittedly unscientific experiment. He and his son waded into the lunch-time crowds at a London park and began handing out free books. Within a few minutes, they had given away 30 novels. Nearly all of the takers were women, who were 'eager and grateful' for the freebies while the men 'frowned in suspicion, or distaste.' more

The books that changed our lives

Six leading feminists recall the writing that first opened their eyes to the women's movement

Brian Dettmer: Book Autopsies

Book Autopsies at Centripetal Notion

Via Design Observer

Slow Man

J.M. Coetzee's first novel since he won the Nobel prize starts off straightforwardly enough. Paul Rayment is knocked off his bicycle by a young hotrodder named Blight. His injuries necessitate the amputation of his leg. This accident forces what Coetzee calls an old man (I later learned Paul was only 60, hardly ancient these days) to confront his waning sexuality and his own mortality. He chooses, I think, to become more embittered, helpless and dependent than his medical condition requires. He refuses a prosthesis and can barely walk or perform self-care. This sets the stage for his infatuation with his competent, kind and attractive Croatian caregiver, Marijana and his emotional entanglement with her family. Suddenly Elizabeth Costello arrives, feisty and meddlesome. She is a character from a previous Coetzee novel and there is no explanation for her appearance. '"You came to me, that is all I can say", is Costello's only comment on the matter. This is where the novel goes off the rails. Rayment doesn't know her, doesn't want her around but nonetheless allows Costello to manipulate his life. Coetzee uses her character as a device to move the story along. At one point she arranges a ridiculously contrived sexual encounter between Rayment and a blind woman. I found this experiment to be clumsy but Coetzee is such a good writer that I enjoyed the novel in spite of it.

Master and Margarita Resource

These Master and Margarita pages are intended as a web-based multimedia annotation to Bulgakov's novel.
via Coudal

Nevermore

The Raven

Librophiliac Love Letter

Curious Expeditions' Compendium of Beautiful Libraries

What's on the Booker shortlist?

Don't have time to read the novels? Read the Guardian's hilarious digested shortlist and you won't need (or want) to read the books.

Adverbs

I picked up this book about different kinds of love by Daniel Handler, better known as the author of the Lemony Snicket series for kids, because Dave Eggers recommended it. He actually said,"Anyone who lives to read gorgeous writing will want to lick this book and sleep with it between their legs." I read the first three stories and gave up. I felt that Handler was trying to confuse me or maybe this is just a particularly difficult piece of post-modernism and I'm too uncool to get it. It is very difficult for me to set aside a book unread and I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I have done so. I have made my painful way through reams of tortured prose over the years. My self discipline in this regard is exemplary. I am of the belief, perhaps misguided, that only the weak of character do not finish what they start. I placed Adverbs in the give away box and no, I did not sleep with it between my legs before I did so.

July, July

Tim O'Brien's novel is about a diverse group of college students from the radical days of the late 1960s brought together again 31 years later for a class of '69 reunion. They drink, reminisce, lust, drink some more, laugh and cry. There's a core cast of caricatures (not characters), a war vet minus a leg, a jilted draft dodger, a law breaking hippie minister, a lonely, yearning fat guy, a suicidal floozy, an uptight Republican minus a breast, a depressed adulteress, a couple of bitter divorcees (who consume staggering amounts of vodka) and a woman who feels herself to be incapable of love, all of whom have deep dark secrets and all deeply wounded in some way. I wonder if my 30 year reunion would have yielded so much dramatic fodder. I'll never know. What I do know is that friends from one's youth are one's best friends like it or not. On the rare occasion I meet up with someone from my distant past it is as if no time has elapsed at all since we were together. These folks are thrown into an emotional maelstrom and meet it head on. They party like it's 1969. They carouse like there's no tomorrow and when tomorrow inevitably comes it's a letdown. Not a great book like O'Brien's In the Lake of the Woods (in fact there are some distinctly cringe inducing passages) but an amusing read for someone like me who experienced the turbulent and liberating late 60's and early 70's.

How did we miss these?

Far from the fame and glamour of the Booker and bestsellers is a forgotten world of literary treasures - brilliant but underrated novels that deserve a second chance to shine. We asked 50 celebrated writers to nominate their favourites. More...

Acquainted With The Night

Via 3quarksdaily