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vikyavorsk

Kris' Books.

Female. Slavic mind. Avid reader.

 I read across a broad range of book genres, with an emphasis on Aus/NZ lit, Russian and Ukrainian literature, Latin-American literature and European history.

 

Too Far Afield - Günter Grass This was a truly fine book to read, written masterfully. If you want to read a book which regards an immense dose of emotions, anecdotes and history in an assuaging manner, yet without compromising or making a semblance of these intangible aspects of life, then I would wholeheartedly recommend this book. I also took great enjoyment in reading the book, to such an extent I wasn't irritated by its formidable size, because of the large amount of insight it provided about key areas of German history that I've always found obscure. However, I really wish I had been better versed in German literature prior to taking on this novel.
The Winter of Our Discontent - John Steinbeck, Susan Shillinglaw An interesting and effervescent novel. The central topic in this book regards an idea which appeals to me- whether it is more possible to succeed in life wholeheartedly following ethical morals or on the pretext of following some given morals, rather than completely coasting along a highway of profligacy and lunacy. Apart from the protagonist, who appears to shift gears between the three aforementioned modes all throughout the plotline, there is a complete set of male and female characters surrounding him who demonstrate almost religious adherence to one or two of these lifestyles.

Each of these characters affect the protagonist in a profuse manner- personally, I cannot weigh up how much each one of the influences produced a positive of negative effect on the protagonist, but it's evident that the pressures which these very same people have placed on him caused him to succumb to the temptations these influences provided. This is alongside with Steinbeck's characteristic connotations of irony and abasement in his writing, causing me to feel wrapped in a complex and diverse web of emotions and relations as I progressed through the book. The ending had a rather offbeat swing to it, but I suppose that it's the only kind of ending it needed, really.
Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison This, in my opinion, is a gem of a book. It really made me think about what it means to be a 'person', of any race, who aims to make something out of his life and stand for his own cause despite the ha
rdships which may come his way. The book encompasses the differences between being socially acceptable and isolated, explores the psychology of people in general, and how much capacity people have to truly follow their destinies. I reckon that this book should be read by every person who considers themselves as following a purpose in their lives.
The Elder Son - Aleksandr Vampilov, Alma Law I think that no piece of writing cheered me up as much as this one in the past half year. It is based on a fairly popular topic, irony of fate, but the irony in this play was remarkably ridiculous and unprecedented. For such a short play, it was impressive how deeply each character was evoked. In most contemporary plays I find it difficult to discern the personalities of each character so that I can judge them properly, but it was not so in this case. Also, it really made me think about what it means to be part of a family, and the mechanism of lying. These are two important themes in the play

Basically, this story is about two young men, Busygin, a medical student, and Silva(real name Simon- "As for nicknaming me they nicknamed me, as for explaining they did not explain"), an aspiring businessman. They have gone to visit friends in a different town, but when they return to the train station they realise they have missed the last train for the night. Deciding they would prefer someplace warm to stay until 5am rather than freezing nearby the ticket booth, they venture into the neighbouring suburb to try their luck at sleeping over at a resident's house. After several failed attempts, Busygin has the idea of knocking at a certain door and attempting to convince a certain person that he is a long lost son. Surprisingly, it works....and from there the drama rolls.

This play is mainly funny because of play on language and cultural conventions. Therefore, I think it would be nearly impossible to effectively translate this play, since the only humour left in the play would be the irony. That being said, I would really like to find a copy of an English translation.



Dreaming in Cuban - Cristina Garcia Overall, this was a very satisfying read. The story involves a Cuban family, who have some members living as immigrants in the 'States and others remaining in Cuba, and, to a lesser extent, people who are somehow related to the family. The book is narrated by each of the characters involved, so the audience not only gets acquainted with the characters by their own dialogue, but also learns how the other characters judge them. Judging others is quite aa significant part of the story because the family does not have a unanimous political and ideological opinion, as well as a mutual agreement about how life should be led. This explains why some of the members have become expatriates.

I really liked this book because of the unequivocal and clear way it portrayed immigration. I have read several books about immigrants from different countries, but I never could perfectly relate to the characters as well as I related to these. The main themes of this book were probably emotional separation, physical separation, familial disagreement and the effects of these combined. If I write a history of my own family, I would probably find that the recurring themes would not be too different. Amazingly, I could match the personalities of each of the characters to those of members of my own family. In short, this book reassured me that in real life, immigration is not a romantic business, especially for families that are divided in opinion. Everyone is afflicted. However, the more sensitive and emotionally aware ones, portrayed as Felicia in the novel, are extremely vulnerable to the pain they feel.

The character I related to most was Pilar. She emigrated from her native country at a young age, similarly to me, and she struggles with the idea of her origin and identity, as well as her purpose in life as a young expatriate. She is emotionally sturdy, youthful, and passionately arrogant, but the question that relentlessly causes her to falter is: "Do I belong more to the U. S or more to Cuba?". Reading about her thoughts and emotions really helped to think more clearly about my own.

"Sometimes, I ask myself whether I have really experienced my adventures. I think of Flaubert, who spent most of his adult life in a French village, or about Emily Dickinson, whose poems reflect the rhythmic ringing of church bells. And then I think that, maybe, the biggest journey I have to complete is through my conscience. But then I think of Gauguin, and D.H Lawrence, and Ernest Hemingway, who, possibly fished with abuelo Guillermo in Cuba, and come to the conclusion that it is necessary to live in this world, to be able to say something good about it . At this very moment, as I sit at a table on the second floor of the library and look at the Barnard College yard, the dead grass outside and the Broadway cars rushing past, I feel that something is happening in me. What exactly- I do not know. I'm still waiting for when I begin to really live in the present."

One of the main aspects of Garcia's prose that impressed me, when I was reading "A Handbook To Luck", was the lucidity of the narration by each of the several characters, and the consummate manner in which the strands merged into one another and wrapped up in the ending. The prose in "Dreaming In Cuban" was not much different in style to the aforementioned work, although I felt that the influence of Ernest Hemingway's writing was much more evident in this work than in the later work. The particular manner in which the characters revealed their personalities, fears and wounds seemed (at least to me) to be reminiscent of Hemingway. Plus, the ending, which was set in the sea exactly like in "A Handbook To Luck", was triumphant (although much more morbid in this book) and ambiguous, compelling one to reflect on the past events in the text and link it to the ending. I have only now realised that Garcia was evocating Hemingway's technique in writing the plot and ending in both books because of the slightly tacky way she approached the ending in "Dreaming In Cuban". It became quite obvious then that the book was not a 100% successful take on Hemingway. In "A Handbook To Luck", the ending seemed to perfectly eke out every stage of the story, while this was lacking in "Dreaming In Cuban". This makes the overall theme of the book a topic of dispute.
The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis (Harvest in Translation) - José Saramago, Giovanni Pontiero "Ricardo Reis lowers the newspaper to look at himself in the mirror, a reflection that is twice deceiving because it shows a deep space then shows that the space is a mere surface where nothing actually happens, only the illusion, external and silent, of persons and things, a tree overhanging a lake, a face seeking itself, a face undisturbed, unaltered, not even touched, by the images of tree and lake and face. The mirror, this one and all others, is independent of man. Before it, we are like a conscript departing for the 1914 war. Admiring his uniform in the mirror, he sees something more than himself, not knowing that he will never see himself again in this mirror. We are vanity and we cannot endure, but the mirror endures, the same, because it rejects us. Ricardo Reis averts his eyes, changes position, leaves, he is the one rejecting, turning his back on the mirror."

If we regard the mirror Saramago refers to in this paragraph as a metaphor for life, then this paragraph probably is the most complete summarisation of the novel itself. This book is set in the rather distant past, precisely 1936. The protagonist, Ricardo Reis, is a Portuguese doctor who has just returned to his native land after spending the past sixteen years practising medicine in Brazil, although he does not travel back to his native town, which is Oporto. Instead he stops at a hotel in Lisbon, and for weeks he does not attempt resuming his profession. In fact, he does not even seriously live in the present. As soon as he settles in the hotel, he starts having an affair with one of the hotel chambermaids, not seriously considering the consequences for his head is too occupied by reminisces triggered by his walks in the rainy Lisbon streets. He becomes haunted by a young woman with a paralyzed left hand, whom he meets at the hotel. On top of it all, he is visited by the ghost of a recently deceased friend, the celebrated poet Fernando Pessoa. The plot concerns how he deals with his extraordinary circumstances, and the discrepancies in the ways his life takes its course.

The thing about this book that impressed me was the way Saramago had written it. The inherent themes of this book were reminiscence and reflection, as well as death or eventual death of all that we regard as essential, even the established essential. These are not at all progressive themes, quite otherwise, they are dispiriting and lethargic. However, the book had (subtle but real) dynamic and momentum. I am not sure how many other writers could pull off a similar feat. As a result, the book had an uncannily disquieting effect on me. The dynamic did not halt at any point in the book, not even at its "ending". I had a heightend sense of the ephemerality of human relationships and faith (the latter, I realised, was a crucial factor in the success of the former), and even the much celebrated phenomenon of death. The only impression I could form amidst all of this was that sense, reason and emotion are the only significant aspects of life, which withstand generations, class struggles, and ghosts grumbling about their present conditions. Sense, reason and emotion were the real dynamic rays in this book, converging together to produce a real image, while everything else diverged and coasted off into space, only virtually dynamic. That was a very muddled impression, rejecting off the convincing confusion of this book.
Heartbreak House - George Bernard Shaw, David Hare, Dan H. Laurence This play is another first for me, in the sense that it is the first work of Shaw's that I have read. At first I had to force myself to simply get through the rather hefty and, at first impression, vehementedly ranting preface, but shortly the reading became more absorbing. The preface mainly regarded the effect of WWI on the present British society, and was very passionately written, which struck me as rather odd because I'm accustomed to reading heavily phlegmatic prefaces. However, it did provide an exceptionally insightful portrait of Great Britain, its society and fundamental establishments (including the Church and Theatre) after receiving a good battering from the shock of the Great War. In the midst of Shaw's very critical analysis, I did notice an iterative cause-and-effect operation in the writing, which was so logically linked together that extending the issues he so clamantly discussed to future events was not difficult to do. It made for a very interesting preface.

The play itself was no less interesting. It is not a laugh-out-loud comedy, but a strangely ludicrous black comedy. The special atmosphere of Captain Shotover's house (christened Heartbreak House by Ellie) adds to the effect of ludicrity. There are several characters involved in the play, all of whom I thought to be equally obsequious charlatans, but in the end turn out to be all human beings so confused by their self-elicited dishonesty that they doubt what it means to be woman or man, a member of English society, or to be a general owner of a soul. Each character seems to represent different classes of English society, for example Ellie, who believes that "body is soul, and soul is body" and that the soul can only be nourished by material objects only obtainable by considerable sums of money, is a member of the young "respectable" lower class, while Lady Utterwood is distinctly a member of English high society, and believes that normality can be installed into Heartbreak House by means of horse stables, "a feature of every proper English home", and that all whims of the soul can be cured by "ragging it about", either by flogging or throwing insults, and so forth.

In any case, what really animates this play is the subtle and clever way Shaw probes into the souls of the various people involved in the play, and comparing the values, vices and virtues of the old with those of the young 'uns. If you consider the entire setting as a metaphor, with Heartbreak House as a ship, and the ship representing England, the conflicts of interest Shaw expressed in the play between the different classes, as well as old and new, it is startling what an accurate prediction of England's future from that point can be drawn. That is brillant.
An Accidental Man - Iris Murdoch "An Accidental Man" is the first book I've read by Iris Murdoch, and it exceeded my expectations enormously. The plot by itself was structured well, but I think the most impressive aspect of this novel was the character development. In less than four hundred pages, Murdoch involves a wide "menagerie" of characters, and each character's personality is so well evoked that by the ending the audience knows each one intimately enough to judge each one and form their own conclusions. The coherent way Murdoch stacked the novel together also benefits the process.

The story involves quite a few strands, the main ones being Ludwig and Gracie's, Matthew and Mavis', and Austin and Dorina's. Although Austin is cited as being the "Accidental Man" in the blurb, I think that each man stated at the beginning of this paragraph could be considered equally "accidental". All of these men and their women have serious issues, and often end up in even graver situations by pure chance, mostly as a result of eluding themselves "accidentally" to the point of no return. I say "mostly" because it's a lot more complex than that.

To summarise it succinctly, without giving too much away: the story's events are expressed through an interesting mixture of third person narration, personal letters, and the excessively gallant, hearsay-concentrated dialogue spoken at social occasions ("they're rich now but, I think, still are socialists"). Murdoch makes up for the not too exciting plotline by making a very thorough humanistic analysis of characters stuck in deep problems, and convincingly writes how they solve their issues. In the end, no one looks outstandingly innocent or passive, since they are all human characters trying to solve their problems, as a rule trying to cause more pain to an outsider than to oneself.
Letters to a Young Poet - Rainer Maria Rilke, Stephen Mitchell This book was only 128 pages in length, and in those 128 pages Rilke considerably changed my view of the world, I'm sure for the better. Ten letters from Rilke to a young poet are included in this book. The letters are treasure troves of advice for any person, young or old, who wishes to realise what he may be missing in his life. The letters from the young poet to Rilke are not included (in the edition I've read at least), which slightly disappointed me. But then, including the letters of the young poet may have introduced an essence of anguished youth into the book, which could seriously interfere with the wise, soothing words of Rilke. The thing I liked the most about Rilke's letters was that he never attempted to inferently or directly scorn or scold his young addressee for any foolish or inconsiderate thoughts or actions. That would have reminded me too much of certain student-teachers who are over-zealous in lecturing about self-help by means of ridiculing the poor student who asks for it, ensuring that they are so humiliated that they will never proceed to read a book like this one ever afterwards. Without wasting any words, Rilke constructs beautiful, inviting sentences in which he calmly explains the importance of venturing into difficult areas of labour, including love, and even offers advice on how to deal with depression.

"How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races, the myths about dragons that at the last moment are turned into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, only once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love... you must realise that something is happening to you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand and will not let you go. Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you don't know what work these conditions are doing inside of you?...If there is anything unhealthy in your reactions, just bear in mind that sickness is the means by which an organism frees itself from what is alien."

"And if there is one more thing I must say to you, it is this: Don't think that the person who is trying to comfort you now lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes give you pleasure. His life has much trouble and sadness, and remains far behind yours. If it were otherwise, he would have never been able to find those words."

If I had discovered this book a year or two ago, when I had problems with my life and person which took a long time to resolve, I think that this book would have set me in the right direction sooner. However, mistakes, after all, are an essential part of learning, which is a difficult labour. Rilke would probably have approved.
Tortilla Flat - John Steinbeck As with the majority of books of books published in the former part of the twentieth century, direct and inferred racism are regular components of the story. No niceties are used to cover up any of the racist attitudes people in interspersed communities like Steinbeck's paisano community of Tortilla flat openly expressed. In a way this makes the story more authentic, as attitudes truly felt back in the day are conveyed. I think racism was not really considered as a vice in the U.S then, so it would only be natural for an author to involve disrespect towards other races in his work. Although Steinbeck tries to portray paisanos convincingly, I don't think he could have done it too well, with his only knowledge of the paisanos sourced from anecdotes by non-paisanos who had attempted to understand the mentality and culture of the people from a very non-paisano perspective after a relatively short experience in paisano settlements. In my opinion, it would take a paisano who had been raised in a paisano settlement to write properly about the paisnos. In other news, my judgement of this novel was not based on Steinbeck's interpretation of paisano culture.

What did take my fancy was the square and substantial structure of the story as a total. The sharp, sardonic wit didn't fail to please either. Under the straightforward third person narration by Steinbeck himself, in a wry tone the reader is transported to the happy-go-lucky world of Tortilla Flat, where all every one really cares about is whether they will have wine and a mate to help unmake as many gallons of vino as they might have on hand. The means the residents of Tortilla Flat use to obtain the pecuniary funds for their drinking habits is as derisory as the way they generally lead their lifestyles. As I read this book, I could not help but be reminded of a text I had read earlier, "The Twelve Chairs" by Ilf and Petrov, where the protagonist, Ostap Bender, mentioned that he sought to "trick and mislead the common people in four hundred honest ways", and the fun of that book was resultant of Bender's ludicrous failings. In this book, I could relate many of the characters' actions to Bender's quote. In short, I wasn't impressed enough to declare "Tortilla Flat" a favourite, but the great carousing ecstasy I felt when I was done with this novel pretty much confirmed that it had firmly planted itself into a notch of my heart. If you are looking for a kind of literary version of a circus, I would recommend this novel.
Shakespeare, Bacon, and the Great Unknown (Dodo Press) - Andrew Lang A masterful piece of work. I have read not too many books by authors who know their area of work exceptionally well. I was really impressed by the thorough historical research undertaken for the book, the amazing reasoning skills, and the beautiful way each paragraph was phrased and structured. Lang tackles many tough historical questions here regarding the life and times of Shakespeare and Francis Bacon, and has shown no signs of failure in unravelling those in a methodical, concise manner. I just cannot find a way to find a weak spot in his research or reasoning.

This book regards a topic I had never known of before. I had considered that it might exist before though, and would quickly send send such meagre cogitations out of my head. However, the fundamental topic of inquiry in this work is: "Was Shakespeare, a village boy with limited education, really the author of the works of genius attached to his name?". It turned out that, at least at the time of the book's writing, there was quite a substantial community of 'Baconists', or people who believed that Francis Bacon was the actual author of the Shakespearean works, using Shakespeare as a pseudonym, and that 'Shakspeare' the Stratfordian actor never considered reading a decent piece of literature in his life.

The scholar with whom Lang disputes in this book even goes as far to say that there was a 'Great Unknown' involved in the writing of the plays, providing a very strong argument in favour of the anti-Shakespeare hypothesis. Nevertheless, Mr. Lang finds very deep faults in Mr. Greene's hypothesis, even in the interpretation of historical sources. As a result, Lang provides a very convincing argument in favour of the Stratfordian 'rustic'. What impressed me most was the way he managed to provide very voluble answers, complete with very accurate reasoning and evidence, to questions such as "If Shakespeare indeed was the author, how come the sale of his plays was never acknowledged by leading figures in the London drama scene?". I also enjoyed learning more about Shakespeare and his contemporaries in the process.
Catching Fire - Suzanne  Collins I enjoyed the second book of the Hunger Games series much more than the first book, because, in my humble opinion, Collins used her storytelling powers far more effectively here than in the preceding book. I wasn't able to guess as much of the plotline as I expected to, judging from my experience with The Hunger Games #1.

Even the character of the plotline itself transformed. The relatively steady pace of book one turned into an unpredictable motley of events, in which one event broke off quickly into another without a significant transition 'phase' in book 2. That was a good thing, because notwithstanding that I would have probably lost interest in the Hunger Games series.
Kolyma Tales - Varlam Shalamov, John Glad This book is entirely devoted to stories of life in the Soviet Gulag, based on the author's own 17 years experience in the Russian penal system. I have read the book in the original Russian, so I noticed that each story was written in relatively short sentences, laced with sombre words and structured as though it pained the narrator of each story to produce it, creating overall depressing connotations. All the tales are striking and convincing in their own way. By the end of the book I think you'll get a good idea of what human nature is like when stripped down to the breaking point.
Paris, My Sweet: A Year in the City of Light (and Dark Chocolate) - Amy Thomas A prettily written book about Paris and New York, by a New Yorker, that will certainly appeal to those who have a sweet tooth for which they will go to any lengths to satisfy. I don't know whether I will visit Paris or New York in my lifetime, but if I do, thanks to this book, I will certainly know what confections I definitely have to gorge myself on and what beverages I must quaff. Perhaps, most importantly, I will know what attitude(s) to expect from the French. Anyway, some of the more bizarre dishes mentioned have managed to motivate me to think about altering recipes I am already familiar with-which I am happy to do at this stage.
Against Infinity - Arthur C. Clarke, Gregory Benford I found this book completely by chance, and I don't regret taking it home with me in any way at all. Essentially, it's a story about a boy growing into a man who has spent his entire life outside of his ancestors' native planet, in Ganymede (the Solar System's biggest moon)and so sees "Earthers" as a completely different type of species.

I particularly enjoyed reading Part I of the story because it was written in an unbelievably accurate, convincing way; every little detail of how it felt like to live on that unforgiving Jupiter moon, where venturing outside of a man-made hut without protective gear would have your spine snapped and entrails estranged from your body by the bitter cold, was not forgotten. The reader receives a very vivid, panoramic impression of Ganymede, not only how the terrain on different regions of the moon varies, but also about how the physical forces interact on the moon, and detailed descriptions of the biological, chemical and physical applications mankind has introduced on the planet. The "science" in "science fiction" really has its meaning enforced in this book.

Part II is significantly less eventful than Part I, but still a very absorbing and masterfully written bundle of text. In part II, we see the teenager we met earlier as a fully grown man, dealing with the uncertainty and nostalgia of early manhood , and still trying to settle down the old ghosts of his childhood in the Settlement. In my opinion, the second part seemed to be a conclusion of the major themes in this novel, which were exclusively coming-of-age, change, death/destruction and the value of humanity. The very ending of it all was ambiguous, I think deliberately ambiguous, and I'm still unsure what to make of it. I suppose the author wished to demonstrate, in this way, the futility and uncertainty of every aspect of human understanding of the universe, which is an idea ubiquitously explored throughout the book.

The Speed of Dark - Elizabeth Moon A really impressive book, in my opinion. Although it is technically classified as science fiction, it does not especially regard technological advancements and other aspects expected of typical books of the genre. It is more of a character analysis and, partly, an analysis of the type of society set in this not so distant future, both in which Moon effectively evokes a convincing portrait of an autistic person using a first person narrative. I think that is quite notable because such deep character analysis is much easier to undertake from the writer's position using the third "eye of God" person narration, so it's not very surprising that many writers opt for the latter narration option. As a result such books as this one are gems to read.

Lou Arrendale is an autistic person, but, being born ahead of our time, he had the good fortune to receive special treatment during infancy that allowed him to be able to grow up to live independently, work, drive, be a competitive-level fencer and even tolerate the things that unreasonably annoy autists (e.g loud, noisy music). He seems almost rid of his autism, however there is a seemingly slight, yet actually massive, aspect of character he lacks in order to be able to qualify as a member of the society of 'normals'- the mentality of non-autistics. Although he has learned to say "things that make normal people feel comfortable", like please and thank you, he remains unable to decipher the behaviour and actions of many of the normal people he knows, and cannot think, speak or act like one, so he has great difficulty in operating in social situations. The dilemma of this book occurs when a new treatment, so new it hasn't been tested on humans yet, is pressured on Arrendale and his autistic colleagues by the company they work for. This treatment is supposed to reverse the effects of autism, leaving a totally normal mentality behind. Should Lou take the treatment or not? And why or why not?

The most interesting thing about the character analysis was that it made me not only realise what it felt like to have autism, but think about what it means to be suitably "normal". What are the benefits of becoming normal? As Lou correctly notices, normal people are all too often crooked as persons. Why do these benefits outweigh the risks of the treatment? All of Lou's weighty ponderings throughout this book help you think over this very interesting dilemma, along with superb storytelling for which I rate this book five stars.