guesthouse days (October)
- Snow - Orhan Pamuk
I’ve already raved about this. I know he’s a very controversial figure in Turkey, and I am not saying that I was totally agreeing with everything that he sort of celebrates in the book. But I am saying that it is a beautiful book. Beautiful in its poetry and its depth and its characters. The kind of beauty that makes me feel better about the world if someone can write a novel like this.
- Tales from a Thousand and One Nights
Oh MAN! Did you know that Aladdin (with his magic lamp and all) is from CHINA? Yes, China. Also great stories like “The Historic Fart,” and countless instances of everyday mores and systems being turned on their head completely. Wow. A really fun and disorienting experience. Jim, my Country Representative, borrowed it and said he stopped reading it after the first 3 stories because they were “All the same.” We disagree on that point.
- Islam: A Short History - Karen Armstrong
I read the forward and had to lie down because i was reeling. Or maybe I was already lying down. In any case, I reeled. All sorts of historical and modern, political and social pieces started to fall into place. Why didn’t I know this stuff before?
The beginning and end of the book were the knock-out bits for me, but the rest (it really is a “short” history of islam, which i appreciated) was engaging and really drew me along as well.
- Voyages of Dr. Doolittle - Hugh Lofting
Hmm, apparently continuing my trend of reading books that include extremely Broad and quite Ridiculous caricatures of “other races.” Not as good as the initial Dr. Doolittle book, but with some good bits and sadly also some uncomfortable bits. According to the forward, the editors cleaned it up so as to make it less racist. At least traveling in a giant snail across the ocean floor and having a duck as a housecleaner - these are good things.
- Stamboul Train - Graham Greene
A really well constructed and well told story of what happens during a 3 day train ride from, ...oh, i forget where...to Istamboul. I hadn’t read any Graham Greene, so when things turn Upsetting I was totally taken by surprise, and ended up being all disturbed afterwards and dwelling on the characters and the events (and had to follow it up right away with the next book). Written back in the days when Jews were another “race.” Yes, those days. The fact that one of the main characters is Jewish is a major part of the book, as far as his motivations and physicality and also the way that the other characters react to him. It gets Extremely Old Very Quickly.
- The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
Nonracist animals! These are the animals we like. Sure, the weasels and the stoats aren’t reliable, but even Rat is on friendly speaking terms with them most of the time. I’ve always liked this one, but with this reading what really popped for me was that the characters are extremely sympathetic and relatively complex, and also there is a very internally consistent set of mores by which the animal kingdom operates. Man, I certainly appreciate an internally consistent constructed world.
- Fasting, Feasting - Anita Desai
Oh, it’s good, it’s just upsetting. Or maybe it was upsetting because of my state of mind when i read it. Really vibrant characters that shine out of relations of every-day life in India and America, but I missed the “subtle humor” that the back cover promised - it was just depressing to me.