andamu

Well, not the weather here, certainly. But definitely the pile of books I brought home from the library.
I did exercise remarkable restraint - only brought five. My time at home is limited, and chores seem to lose importance if I have too big a stack of inviting books waiting for me.
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It all came about because Nini and I went to pick out Angel Face's bicycle. 16" of magenta and violet Disney Princesses with sparkly streamers at the grips and little flowers clipped to the spokes. (Two reasons: 1) It was the only 16" bicycle they had there, and 2) Miss Muppet is still in her princess phase, so she was over the moon.)
I had to work right up to (and including) the 24th, so there was no serious pre-shopping time. By the time that we went looking for the bicycle (on the 23rd), everything was sold out. Everywhere. So we got her only the helmet and the knee and elbow pads, promising the bike this week.
Which was when I saw a half-price copy of Reading Lolita in Tehran. And grabbed it, and started reading it in the car on the way home (Nini driving!)
Which got me thinking that I really never read Lolita in the first place. Of course I had made a furtive attempt at it when it was forbidden to me to do so, but for a whole lot of reasons I never finished.
So, off to the library to find a copy - which I did, fortunately. Now the quandary is, should I first read Lolita itself, or should I complete the Tehran novel? (And yes, I know that Lolita is but one example of the books that they read, and my edition has a list of suggested readings and "reader's guide" questions in the back. But I have to start somewhere after all.)
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The bicycle required a lot of assembly. In fact, I will need to either buy/borrow some tools to make sure that all the nuts and bolts are tightened sufficiently - some of them keep slipping. Amazingly we managed to complete the assembly without poppet suspecting a thing, then smuggled it back out to the van to take it to the gas station to put air in the tires. (Bicycle pump? Why would we have a bicycle pump?)
Fortunately the persistent little drizzle that had dampened the air all day disappeared for a bit while Angel Face came to terms with this wondrous gift under the lamp light in the cul-de-sac. It took a surprising amount of time to make her understand that she should only pedal "forwards." And a couple of times she struggled until red in the face to get the bike started, until we noticed her little hand clenching the calliper brake lever.
But oh, she had fun. And so did we.
Of course now she wants to ride her bike to school. All nine miles.

Yesterday was a funny old day, filled with abandoned plans. I did in fact bring the Society's books up to date in the morning, reconciling bank statements, balancing the check book, filing awards and membership lists, but of the rest of the plans nothing came.
The reason is that the day turned into a marathon reading session. The night before, three chapters into Reading Lolita in Tehran, and still wavering between reading Nabokov first or completing the Nafisi, I suddenly decided to clear away the Secret History.
It looks harmless enough, about the same thickness as most novels, and quite a bit thinner than most thrillers. Once opened however, the fine paper reveals that you are getting a lot more pages per inch than is the norm. Five hundred and fifty-eight of them, to be precise.
After finishing the Society's accounts, I decided on a nap in true vacationing fashion - instead the book hi-jacked me and held me captive. Almost without noticing 220 pages or so flew by.
When I emerged to comments of "Some nap you had," I protested by sleepless state, and defended my story by citing my progress in the book.
Big mistake. All of a sudden completing the book became a family goal. If I set my foot outside the room, I would be reprimanded and sent back - after an inquiry to the current page tally.
Apart from a quick dinner break, and a lovely hot shower before crawling into bed, I had my nose glued to the book, now in the armchair, then crosswise on the bed, back in the armchair, one leg slung over the arm, back on the bed, sitting on the floor with my knees drawn up, back to the chair...
By 10.50 p.m. I had reached page 546. Twelve to go I saw when I jerked awake from my moment's slumber. This would normally be my signal to turn out the light but - the end was so tantalizingly near. So I forced open my eyes, shuffled myself into a better position among the pillows, and determined to finish.
During the next five drop off/jerk awake sessions I managed to progress to page 547. Just barely.
Conceding defeat I finally turned out the light around 11.30 p.m.

This reminds me so much of being a student the first time around, of the way that sleep would just move right in, take up residence behind my eyelids whenever I bent my head over a text book, no matter how many times I shook my head, how much cold water I would splash in my face, how vigorously I would jog in place or do jumpin' jacks.
And then at other times sleep can be such an elusive thing, retreating, always just outside the range of my desperate grasp.

I finished the book first thing this morning. And am perversely wishing that the book had been just a bit longer, giving just a glimpse more of the "what next."

The version of Lolita that I borrowed from the library is the Everyman's Library edition, with an introduction by Martin Amis. He starts,

"Like the sweat of lust and guilt, the sweat of death trickles through Lolita. I wonder how many readers survive the novel without realizing that its heroine is so to speak, dead on arrival, like her child."

And that fortifies me through my reading, the thought that someone else understands that this book is not so much to be read as to be survived.
I am staunchly opposed to banning books. I state firmly, with Oscar Wilde, "There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all." I am the first to take up Heinrich Heine's cry: "Wherever they burn books, they will also, in the end, burn people."
Yet there had been many times in my struggle through this book (currently not quite two-thirds done) that I had to explicitly remind myself of my convictions.
The book is undoubtedly well written. It is slow going not because of any failures of the mechanics of the writing, but because of the frequent breaks I feel the need to take in the light of the horrific nature of the subject matter.
And still I carry on, wrestling with my feelings and my convictions, and forcing myself to finish the book before I can continue with Reading Lolita in Tehran.
On a more positive note, Nabokov excellently captures so many aspects of America, American life and its objects of interest in his narration, in turn summarizing and caricaturizing hotels and motels, clothes, monuments and points of interest, institutions, movies, restaurants, magazines and even human nature. His is a deft and detailed brush, which makes the terrible story so much more realistic and horrifying.
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With the tsunami and its toll much on everyone's mind, Sri Lanka has been frequently in the news recently. Funny Boy by Shyam Selvadurai is an excellent novel set in Sri Lanka, the story of a young boy growing up and realizing that there are echoes of struggle everywhere - within himself, his family, his community and his country.
A brief, incomplete and in large parts inaccurate synopsis of the country can be found in a flawed simile with Northern Ireland.
Northern Ireland's people are divided along religious lines that originally had a strong ethnic origin (Celts and Anglo-Saxons) although over the ages those ethnic lines have blurred. There is a majority and a minority, with (at least ostensible) power residing with the majority. A minority of the minority is militant about the situation, as is a minority of the majority. Large parts of both the majority and (as in this novel) the minority are not violent, and caught in the middle.
I did warn at the outset that the simile is flawed, and bears no close scrutiny, nor can it be extended beyond the most superficial bounds. But it does serve to create a broad overview of the situation.
The book itself is wonderful. If anyone reads it, I'd love to discuss it.
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Enough procrastination now, though. Lolita awaits, unfortunately.

I have completed Lolita. Finally, last night I wrestled through the final fifty pages. And then the author's afterword. And then I went back to read Martin Amis' introduction completely.
I had started that earlier, but had abandoned it on the second page, because I felt - foolishly perhaps - that I wanted to read Lolita the first time not colored by the interpretation of others, or at least not more so than the sketchy bits to which I had been exposed so far. Which is also why I had wanted to read it before starting in earnest Reading Lolita in Tehran.
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This drive to read a work for the first time completely fresh, experiencing only my own response to the work, has become absurdly important to me in recent years.
I know I miss many of the important themes in the book. I know that I might have a "fuller" experience if I take other opinions into account. But unless I do it this way, I will never know what my own true response was to the book, how it affected me personally.
Later, before I reread the book, I search out other opinions and critical analyses of the work, and re-evaluate both it and my perceptions in the light of these.
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I celebrated its completion by digging into The Giver by Lois Lowry. This is a Newbery medal winner, a work frequently prescribed for high school students, about a Utopia which is based on "Sameness," where difference has been eliminated and everything is experienced at a mild level without extremes.
The book is an easy read; I started it last night before turning out the light and I finished it this morning in bed before breakfast. (MLK is our last company-paid holiday until Memorial Day). I should qualify that last statement - the read might be easy, but the material is not: it is challenging and thought-provoking.
A friend who came to lunch yesterday brought it for me to read, and I dislike holding on to borrowed books for too long, scared that I might forget to return it, or that something might happen to the book.
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And so this morning, I started back on Reading Lolita in Tehran and also The Mistress of Spices.
Why two books together, you might ask. Well, I am reading the Nafisi aloud to my husband, so I can obviously only read that while the two of us are together with time to devote to the book. At other times I will be enjoying the Divakaruni.
Both are engaging, so that it is with reluctance that I put them down, even when only exchanging one for the other.
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And I have another book to add to my Future reading list: The In-Between World of Vikram Lall by M.G. Vassanji. This book was a birthday gift to my precious one by his younger son, so I'll queue up behind him to read it.

I don't think that I am ready to start analysing Lolita yet. Perhaps I won't be ready for a while, perhaps not ever. Every time I start a thought it gets side-tracked. The only thing I do know is that Nabokov ensured that the reader would have to work really hard to make sense of this book.

A few things in the author's afterword caught my attention. The novel was published originally in 1955, and the afterword was written in 1956, after the initial introduction of the book to the public, and after the public's initial reaction to the book.
In it, he speaks of the fact that the public's reaction was "based not on my treatment of the theme but on the theme itself, for there are at least three themes which are utterly taboo as far as most American publishers are concerned. The two others are: a Negro-White marriage which is a complete and glorious success resulting in lots of children and grandchildren; and the total atheist who lives a happy and useful life, and dies in his sleep at the age of 106."
Times have changed - in respect to two of those themes at least. While they might not exactly be embraced and widely applauded by all, at least they are no longer an utter taboo.
Nature however has filled the vacuum left by those two, and substituted other themes. What do you, dear reader, think are the other two taboo themes du jour?

Speaking of the critics' reception of the book, and disagreeing with a number of them, Nabokov then mentions that "...an American critic suggested that Lolita was my love affair with the romantic novel. The substitution 'English language' for 'romantic novel' would make this elegant formula more correct."
Nabokov had to "learn America" until he became as fluid in painting her images and speaking from her heart as earlier he had been doing about the Continent. Just so he had to learn the English language beyond mere ability to speak it fluently (his first nanny was English) but to paint masterfully and effortlessly with it.
And here follows a cry from the heart, bemoaning the fact that none of his American friends had read any of his Russian novels, and that they had not been translated. He yearned for the deftness of his mother tongue that allowed him to create on a completely different level.

All of his Russian novels have since been translated, but herein lies a puzzle to me. Think of a novel (in English) that you find intensely powerful, not only in its theme(s) but also in its language per se. Can you conceive of a translation, any translation, that would have the same power, when that power is inherent in the very language that was used?
For those of you who speak a second language (or more), especially when that language was acquired later in life - let's say French (which I don't speak): when you first read and admired French poetry in translation, how did your perception and appreciation of that poetry change as you learned more French, and you started to understand that poetry in its native language?
I'm in the unfortunate (for the purposes of this discussion at least) position that I learnt both the languages in which I am fluent at such an early stage that I cannot answer the question by experience, but only by conjecture.
I guess I could try it with German poetry translated to English - my German is broken, but with just enough background and commonality with Afrikaans that I might be able to start deciphering the meaning (provided the tense is simple), somewhat like a student learning a language for the first time.

So then the actual question is: to what extent can we really say that we have experienced a work of literature when we read it only in a language other than that in which it was originally written?

This weekend I finally managed to finish Reading Lolita in Tehran. And I am about eight pages away from finishing In a Dry Season. It seems I get most of my solid reading done when I am under the weather and am not energetic enough to go gallivanting about.
Yes, still the same old cold - just the lingering after-effects, in fact. It wasn't too bad this time, just particularly long and tedious.

I've also for the first time in a very long while rented a few DVDs, and we've watched one each on Friday and Saturday evening. Both of them were hits as far as I am concerned, but I am not so sure about the others' reactions.

Last night we watched "A Home at the End of the World," based on the novel by Michael Cunningham which I had read a little while ago. On Friday it was "Lost in Translation."

I'll post more on both movies and the Nafisi memoir in a while, but I am on my way out right now. Perhaps getting out of the house will help me get my thoughts in order as well.

Consider for a moment being "stuck" in Tokyo as a typical white American. By "stuck" I mean being there at someone else's whim, without a set agenda (at least for large parts of the day), being left to one's own devices. White because the characters were, and some of the points hinge on that fact. Typical in the sense that one is at most peripherally aware of Japanese culture, and can neither speak nor read Japanese. Of course there are several different places in the world where this scene might play out with the same difficulties - we're considering Tokyo because this is where the movie was set.

The setting magnifies the feeling of being alone, isolated and at a loss. It is always tough when you look different from those around you, but you feel even more of a sore thumb when, like Bob, you stick out head and shoulders above everyone else.

The quality of many experiences are determined by one's frame of mind. What might be an exciting and enjoyable novel encounter can just as easily be an alienating and bewildering experience. Bob's frustration and disenchantment grows as he finds the translation to be suspect, and his inability to understand the director forces a certain objectivity onto the scene where he sees the proceedings as grotesquely theatrical; no doubt similar antics on sets in the US barely cause a raised brow or rolled eye.

Both Bob and Charlotte are facing difficult patches in their marriages. Bob feels unneeded, disengaged from his wife's remodelling projects, and no particular affection for or from her.
Charlotte feels irrelevant, insignificant and is starting to see sides to her husband she hasn't noticed (or paid attention to) before.
Both Bob and Charlotte are facing difficulties in their work lives. Charlotte as a recent Philosophy graduate doesn't know whether she would find a job, or what that might be; Bob is facing a decline or at least change in his career from movie star to doing plays and commercials.

They are both at a loss, unable to understand or successfully engage with the culture, unable to understand the language or even to try to make sense of it since they cannot even read the characters, and to top it all the persistent jet lag emphasizes their juxtaposition with their environment by keeping them awake when ordinary people are asleep.

It seems to be this sense of being out of step with their environment but somehow in synch with one another that draws them together, as if they share a secret, in a place where so much externally mystifies them.

In the interview with him and Sofia Coppola, Bill Murray stumbles to express his feelings around an important scene. But he is correct - the scene where Charlotte and Bob are on Bob's bed is the pivotal point of the movie. It is the point where most stories make a choice between consummation of the affair or turning on one another. And here they take the decision to do neither, to keep what is precious within the relationship without turning it into a physical love affair.

For the moment at least. For there are many further points where decisions have to be made, or reinforced. One thinks of the awkward pecks on the cheek in the elevator. Cruelly, the decision has to be made there not once, but twice.

And the movie heroically refuses to let the viewer off easy by giving in to the expectation, the feeling of "surely that must mean that this time they will change their minds." In fact the most heartless tease happens at the end where at first it seems to dissolve into cliché when Bob spots Charlotte walking in the crowd, stops the car on the way to the airport and dashes through the throng to embrace her. It stretches the hope to breaking point, before it snaps as he turns away and resumes his journey.

In the end, the difficult decisions are not over when the turning point is reached; instead we have to affirm them again and again and yes, again. And we don't simply get kudos for simply making the choice once, and then succumbing thereafter, because "after all, we have tried."

For a while I had been reading mainly mysteries which would mostly be classified as escapism despite the fact that some of them transcend the normally plot-driven genre into the realm of "literature."

While at school I fell in love with serious reading again in a Comparative Literature class, to the extent that I took the second course even though not only was it not required, I could not apply its credits toward my graduation - I had already completed every free elective I had.
Then I started working in the real world, and while adjusting to the pace and demands of my job and without overt guidance as to what to read I fell back into reading mysteries almost exclusively.

Years ago I started compulsively collecting the authors whom I frequently read. Through various moves (several of them among countries) I got rid of some of them, but I kept a few. Looking at them now my eye glides over neat shelves of Patricia Cornwell, Colin Dexter, Elizabeth George, Sue Grafton, Martha Grimes, Reginald Hill/Patrick Ruell, PD James, Faye and Jonathan Kellerman, John le Carre, Ellis Peters, Ian Rankin, Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine, Peter Robinson, Dorothy Sayers and Dorothy Simpson.

Much as I enjoy these, I started yearning for more challenging reading as well. At first I returned to my alma mater's web page to look for the book list for the same set of courses, then I branched out to Comparative or World Literature courses at other universities to build a reading list, focusing on literature from East Asia, the Indian subcontinent, Africa and the Middle East. One of the advantages of finding suggestions from courses is that although the books for each course are from varied cultures, they explore similar themes, making for much more involved reading.
Then one day I received an email from B&N advising me of reading groups led by the authors at Barnes & Noble University. I had a look at the books to be discussed and they also had suggested additional reading; this again allowed for the exploration of a theme across multiple books. I found some that interested me there and started adding to my reading list. Since these books were western (mostly American or Canadian with some British and Irish) the result was a more balanced reading list.

Currently many of the additions to my list are made based on the suggestions by various commenters, or blogs I regularly read.
When a new author is suggested, I generally pick one title and try it. If I like it, I add the author to my reading list rather than individual works - I get a little obsessive that way (as you might tell by the mystery list above).

I am still trying to decide what exactly to do about the books I am reading in the blogging context. A thought that keeps whirling around is to start a book blog where I would post my thoughts about and reactions to the books I read.
In an ideal world it would actually be a book club blog, where others would post their own reviews/thoughts, or we might "discuss" themes and questions about a book we've all read in an online version of a reading club. Of course we would have to make our own coffee and bake our own muffins...

Trying to tackle a book or movie review I find myself daunted by the task. The scope is too broad, the assignment too vague.
Where do I begin? More importantly, where do I end?

Do I give a plot summary? From what perspective do I examine it? Do I try to cover every aspect of it?

And then the realization that I enjoy writing about books or movies in the context of a question, or an issue. A habit picked up from writing far too many papers written at University I suppose.

When dealing with a question I can see where to start, what to cover, how to involve the entire piece, and where to end. And so that is the way I will be dealing with "reviews" from now.

Which means that I am actively soliciting questions/issues around any of the books I profess to have read in the sidebar. And because I am nice to you all, I'll give some examples from within the blog:

• someone had asked what the point was of Lost in Translation (well, in a roundabout way)


• the complex cultural and societal structure of Sri Lanka as response to its media prominence after the tsunami


• someone had expressed concern about the authenticity of Reading Lolita in Tehran, and other works of that type

The latter response will be the next post. Feel free to jump in any time!

Briggy had read the book a while ago, and when I mentioned that I had started it, he asked me for my comments on it. In our email thread that ensued, he mentioned that

With books like Reading Lolita I feel that I am learning so much about the world we live in. I feel ashamed at my own lack of knowledge. then I get distrustful: "What if the author has an agenda, is biased, politically motivated... or even a fraud!" etc. and of course all of these things will be true to an extent because it is a personal account.

So I want to read more. To make my own limited understanding feel more 'rounded.'

I went through the "thriller" phase as a teen and young adult and read quite a lot within that genre, always relishing the new things about distant countries, history, perspectives I was learning along the way. Then I read The Fourth Protocol by Frederick Forsyth (whom I held in great regard) that dealt in part with South Africa.
And he got stuff wrong, lots of stuff. And not only the big political-type stuff that is open to opinion and interpretation, but the little factual color details, the things that set the scene and make it authentic, even down to consistently and atrociously misspelling basic names. In his other books I have been relying on similar little details to flesh out foreign places for me, to color the scenes in my mind.
Once I started to look for it, I could find these types of inconsistencies within other novels by other novelists as well, and when in doubt I started checking facts, and became more and more disillusioned. The crowning moment came in a Tom Clancy I read (while in India) that as part of its world-wide plot relied on a manipulated signal at Victoria Terminus in Mumbai which sent a train hurtling through without stopping and causing a catastrophic crash some distance beyond the station. Victoria Terminus is well, a Terminus. No train can go trough - the tracks terminate at a concrete barrier - trains pull in going "forward" and pull out going "backward", or vice versa.

The above being a long winded way to say that I tend to share a healthy scepticism about the reality and veracity of books.
Reading Nafisi I certainly get the feeling that she is entirely sincere in what she expresses, although I also get the impression that she is carrying such a lot of hurt that she is incapabable of writing completely objectively, or even fairly.

But then that is not what I was interested in when reading this book,
at least not after I got into the story. What I am interested in is what Nafisi's experience was of living during that period, what her perspectives were, how she changed and grew through that part of her life. And in that I find authenticity in her voice.

Yes, I do think she has an agenda, both on a personal level as well as on a professional level (see the website of the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins - some of the links seem outdated, but clicking around the site gives a better idea). But it is an open agenda, and it does not detract from the clarity of her voice or her convictions.
She is not purporting to write a definitive factual and historical account of that period in Iran - she is sharing explicitly her personal perspectives and experiences, from a particular well-defined, elite niche within the Iranian community.

For an interesting look at the book as a snapshot of Iran then from within today's Iran, look at the Washington Post's review of Reading "Reading Lolita in Tehran" in Tehran.

Moving beyond the question of veracity, I found the way she used analysis of the novels (and novelists) to provide insight and context for her situations, experiences and personal growth to be completely engaging.

To some extent I find the book arguing more for the importance of literature and its relevancy to life than for the acceptance of a particular perspective on the history of Iran. And the arguments are certainly compelling and eloquent, while avoiding the trap of trying to fit analogies too closely or taking them too far; early on she adamantly states that the mullahs were not Humbert, and the people were not Lolita.

While it is not necessary to know all the works discussed, it certainly doesn't hurt. For one thing I am very glad I persevered and completed Lolita before resuming Nafisi; in fact, to answer Mary's question, despite my struggles in reading Lolita at all, the Nafisi so inspired me (and my general curiosity got the better of me) that I snapped up the Annotated Lolita when I came across it on Amazon. I have virtually no French while Nabokov peppers the text with phrases, and although I think I managed to get most of the literary references, I have the kind of personality that would like to make sure of that fact. Also I thought that the annotations will assist me in a critical rereading in the light of the Nafisi.

I knew the Austens she referred to, but not the James nor (as I realized with a shock) the Fitzgerald. (I had never read The Great Gatsby, the great staple of American education - at the level at which I joined University here I suppose it was assumed that everyone had read it earlier.)
Thus, having read the Austens some time ago, Lolita immediately before, and The Great Gatsby immediately afterward I noted with interest the way my perspective changed both in terms of my appreciation of the Nafisi and of the other works. I certainly want to reread the Austens and Lolita in the light of the Nafisi, and I want to reread Nafisi, especially the Fitzpatrick section in the context of my recent completion of The Great Gatsby.

There is a list of recommended books in the back of the book that I will certainly take under consideration in planning my future reading list, and in my edition there is a study guide with questions at the end, but despite my profession earlier, I haven't looked too closely at them yet.

And yes, there was more than a drop of irony in the fact that they were in Iran reading Western authors at a time when Iran was resolutely turning its back on all things Western and sharply trying to distinguish itself and its own culture from the West, while I am here in the States reading a whole lot of "foreign" novels.

It is by no means a perfect book from any point of view, whether from a technical angle or a historical one. But in the end I have to say that this is a living book for me; it is one to which I will return for its perspectives and insights, but most of all for the different manner it invites me in which to think.

Let's start with the basic assumptions that a person has read a book with attention and has mulled it over for a while.

Given those basics, can anyone's interpretation of the work be wrong? And if the meaning of the book is a form of truth, does this mean that there are multiple versions of the truth, all equally valid and all true at the same time, even if they are completely contradictory?

In part these questions arose from the context of some of the books that I have been reading. Jag alludes to it in a wonderful review of Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy (accompanied by amazing before and after shots of the paperback that tells the story quite eloquently), this question around the fact "that there were an almost infinite number of situations in the narrative that made me wonder how a Western readership could comprehend it."

Many of the books I have been reading have been of cultures that are not the dominant one in the US. I have an intimate understanding of some of the cultures, and a better-than-the-average-American understanding of some of the others, and virtually no clue about yet another group.

When I read something from the latter category I am constantly aware that I have no way to judge its "authenticity" (hello briggy) and am most likely missing many implicit references; when reading a book from a former category I am aware that I am "getting" stuff that I don't think the guy next to me will.

And I think this makes a difference to someone's interpretation of a book, and can end up turning around a final opinion of the work. But still, each considered opinion is in its own way a co-existent parallel truth, is it not?

When I search for an annotated version of a work to help me understand the references, am I then altering my truth? Or more precisely, am I tampering with my truth? Or am I creating just yet another truth, which now co-exists with the truth of the first reading within me? Or am I destroying my original truth? And if it can be destroyed, was it ever truth in the first place?

Sagnik has been giving me a hard time about the fact that I don't watch movies in the theater. In fact, the last time I was in a movie theater was December 1999, in Durban, South Africa, where we saw a double bill: "The World is Not Enough" and "The General's Daughter."

I used to watch a lot of movies; those who have been reading my blog for a longer time will recall that as a student the first time around I used to live in an apartment block set atop a midtown shopping center. The movie theaters were at the lowest level, so I used to lock my apartment door, walk down the corridor, call the elevator and descend to the theater entrance. There were four or five other theater complexes within a radius of four blocks outside as well.

I think my best movie experience in a theater was seeing a rerun of the Aristocats at ten p.m. along with an entirely adult audience; no screaming kids, just a group of people who took simple, uncomplicated joy and a certain sense of a special shared experience from the movie.
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So, what happened? Well, for one thing we came to the US, and at my advanced age I went back to university to start studying all over again. I enrolled for a Bachelors in Computer Engineering, and worked my tushy off - completing the degree in three years. Obviously you know how I spent my summers. And then I was one of the only ones in my class at the prestigious engineering school to have a job offer in hand when I graduated. In that market, I grabbed it (it helped that it was my dream job) and went straight to work.

Since I've started I've been saving my leave to get enough together for a decent trip to India (which we'll be able to take this year from Thanksgiving to New Year), and in the interim working 10+ hour days before coming home to a family and blogs and various other things occupying my time.

Quite frankly, I haven't really had the desire to go and spend my time and money in a movie theater. For a long time the only movies I saw were on flights and the occasional showing on TV. Very rarely would we visit the video store.
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A couple of weeks ago my husband took a membership in Blockbuster Online, however. It works basically like Netflix, and adds coupons for two in-store rentals a month. Therefore we will be getting a steady stream of movies now, and at first I will most likely feel obligated to watch it, and later would most likely just glance at it cursorily. But suggestions of what to add to my queue would be gratefully received.

The first DVDs we ordered were Peter Brook's Mahabharata. In fact, to some extent that is why we took the membership because online was the only way to get hold of them in this area. I hesitate to discuss the production here, however, because there are such a lot of strong feelings surrounding this work. (If you have no idea what I'm talking about, recall the tempest surrounding the Last Temptation of Christ for an inkling - although of course the reasons for the reactions were vastly different, only the intensity was the same.)

The third movie in this first batch was About a Boy, a British comedy that could easily be dismissed as a lightweight piece of fluff. I found some redeeming qualities in it, however, most significantly in its refusal to descend to stereotypical resolutions and easy answers, e.g. Will and Mom do not fall in love and they all live happily ever after, Marcus doesn't turn out to have the voice of an angel, have the auditorium on their feet, or become immensely popular overnight.

It's a nice movie, fun and funny, but by no means a great work. See it; unless you can't stand Hugh Grant you'll probably enjoy it. But I certainly wouldn't drive across town to get to it.
::
Our penultimate visit to a movie theater was in a northern suburb of Chicago, seeing "As Good As It Gets." The movie had just opened, and the theater was packed (did I mention I hate crowds?)
After her son is finally accurately diagnosed when Nicholson foots the bill after years of hospital runs, Helen Hunt exclaims "&*^%-ing HMOs!" The entire theater roared in appreciation. That is the only thing I miss, that shared experience.

When my sister was about eight years old we saw "Annie," and we were petrified when she started climbing the railway tracks like a ladder on the raised drawbridge.
As the villain grabbed again at her ankle, Nini shouted: "Kick him!" in utter panic. Ripples of laughter went through the audience once the shock wore off, and the next time the bad guy made a grab for her, the entire theater semi-whispered: "Kick him!"

Being mostly house bound this past weekend (hopefully my final few skirmishes with this tenacious cold) allowed me time to read and watch some movies on DVD.

In addition to reading Samina Ali's Madras on Rainy Days and starting Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon, I completed The Red Tent by Anita Diamant and watched (among others) The Girl with a Pearl Earring.

We need to continue our (somewhat onesided) conversation about context; I thought frequently about this while reading the Ali directly after the Diamant.

But the theme I wish to explore in my next discussion is that which The Red Tent and The Girl with the Pearl Earring share. Any thoughts? Guesses? Anyone read/see either of these? Both?

Adoration of the Magi,
Velazquez

Judith with the Head
of Holofernes,
Lucas Cranach the Elder

Martha and Mary
Magdalene,
Caravaggio

Joseph's Bloody Coat
brought to Jacob,
Velazquez

The Mocking of Christ,
Matthias Grunewald
The Presentation in the Temple,
Hans Memling

The Finding of Moses,
Paolo Veronese

Christ and the Fallen Woman,
Lucas Cranach the Younger

Prophet Elijah and the
Widow of Sarepta,
Bernardo Strozzi

The Birth of the Virgin,
Giovanni da Milano

Christ in the House of
Mary and Martha,
VelazquezI have been mulling over how best to present my arguments in discussing The Red Tent and The Girl with a Pearl Earring. I keep running into obstacles, because a lot of the points I want to make seem self-evident in my first run-through but yet prove potentially obscure to others.

And so I thought I would start with a little preparation work first. Given that one of the works is set in the biblical era, and the other involves a renowned painter, I thought a good place to begin would be with paintings of biblical scenes.

The thumbnails below are linked to the website where I found them - a great place for further browsing as well.

Pay attention if you will to the incongruous and anachronistic touches in the images represented below; easy starting points are clothing and environment.

Also, to arm yourself with sufficient ammunition to refute my feeble claims, you might wish to start reading the critical reviews of the two works to be considered; the links in the first paragraph will take you to their respective pages on amazon, and you might wish to look at those reviews that rated it at two stars or below.

As children we would pick a figure -- Cinderella or the Lone Ranger or Joan of Arc or Charles Lindbergh or Lawrence of Arabia -- and pretend to be them, perhaps act out with our imaginary or real friends a pivotal scene known to us, and then give our imaginations free rein to create what happened next.

When we get older, our questions of "why?" "what was the context?" "how come?" "what next?" could be adressed (among those of us who are big enough nerds) by tackling the books -- and the internet -- to research the answers to those questions.

But what if the answers cannot be found, if no further information exists? What if the story took place four thousand years ago, or 350 years ago, and nothing else is known about the incident or even the main characters, with just a bit more surviving about the supporting characters in the story?

Well, then we fall back upon our rich imaginations to create a story, an answer to our own questions. This is certainly not a new technique, and it has been practiced in both its literary and visual form for as long as stories have been told and as images have been made. It has been applied frequently even when more details do exist, in fact, because few people can resist a good tale.

And this is the overt aspect that The Red Tent and The Girl with a Pearl Earring share, this fascination with a historical figure set within the context of more well-known characters, portrayed in a brief snapshot; in one case a famous but mysterious painting, in the other a single chapter in Genesis.

Both works share a meticulous attention to historical detail, the result of thorough research to understand what life had been like for people in their situations, what the social structures were, what occcupied daily life, what the environment and facilities were, even what utensils were available.

As Anita Diamant said in an interview, she wanted to make sure that any errors made in her novel was not of historical detail. Fittingly, the movie version of The Girl with a Pearl Earring relied heavily on other contemporary paintings by Dutch and Flemish artists to ensure the visual authenticity of its scenes and props.

But even within their authentic settings with realistic interactions, both works remain fictional; imagined stories to give life and voice to the characters, both before and beyond the snapshots we have of them. And it is this fictional aspect that draws the heaviest criticism of The Red Tent, the fact that it takes a biblical story and reinterprets it.

And yet this has been done throughout the ages, both verbally and visually; just look at the selection of paintings in the previous post. See how they have been set in contemporary (to the painter) settings, the appointments and clothing, the interactions and the embroidering upon the tale.
Think of the fact that there are four gospels relating the same set of events, and they frequently contradict one another. And the four different writers (or traditions) identified within the books of Moses and the significant ways in which these differ among themselves, even with respect to the creation story.

It is ironic to note that many of the plot details for which Diamant is most criticized are actually borne out by biblical references directly: the malicious and murderous nature of Simon and Levi, the infamy of Reuben and the like. But the charge which might be the most serious is that in this novel that gives a voice to women in the Bible, and is therefore labeled a feminist work, a rape is dismissed as a consensual act. It certainly is a grave accusation, and cause for concern because it is a situation that many women face.

At the same time it has to be remembered that we are dealing with a culture and a period when women were frequently killed for perceived sexual transgressions; women caught (or even suspected of) adultery were stoned while men walked away scot free. It was also a time when such exaggerated punishments were meted out and revenge exacted that it gave rise to the law of "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" in order to curb the runaway violence.

But this is not intended to be an apology for either work, or an exercise in biblical exegesis, nor a discussion of the Diamant story within a religious context (although I certainly would be willing to engage in such a respectful discussion with anyone interested).

I found both stories wonderfully rich, sensuous experiences, deftly told within realistic settings. They evoked empathy with the main figures, explored rich themes, caused (well, still are causing) me to ponder issues alluded to in the works in the broader context of everyday life.

No, I did not find the movie to be too slow, lacking in plot or dialogue. I did not find it cryptic or incomplete as many who have read the book first have complained. The unanswered questions with which I am left are just the start of my own imaginings, the best place to be.

And I found the book to be fascinating, extremely well-written, disturbing and enlightening. It helps that I have an interest in ancient civilizations and history I suppose, but the wealth of factual information is never presented as a dry lecture. Nor does she patronize the reader; details about everyday events and actions are unfolded matter-of-factly as part of the tale.

If I have a criticism against the book it is the latter part, after she reached Egypt, and her son becomes grown. The whole narrative becomes shallower, less engrossing, more perfunctory. Mind you, Diamant's "perfunctory" might be another writer's "detailed and committed," it suffers mostly in comparison to the earlier parts.

In all, both works I feel are to be highly recommended; no doubt I will be returning to them repeatedly in future.

AbandonPico Iyer has been called the poet laureate of travel writers. Most of his previous works have been categorized as travelogues, although when reading interviews with him, there is an impression that he is not entirely comfortable with the label. In "A Note About the Author" at the back of Abandon, it is phrased this way: "Pico Iyer is the author of several books about the romance between cultures..."

He is a verbal virtuoso, and I found myself frequently scribbling quotes from Abandon into the nearest notebook. And so I think in lieu of a review in my words of Abandon, I would rather present you with a collection of quotes in his own words, after setting the scene: be warned, I will not be doing it justice.

John MacMillan is an English graduate student in Divinity with a fellowship to study in California. His dissertation is on the Sufis, with reference to Rumi. In addition to the challenges he faces in completing his dissertation, he becomes reluctantly involved with a young woman who is facing a legion of her own demons.

Although England and America are both home territory to Iyer, having been raised and/or spent significant time in both, he cannot resist "traveling," exploring new vistas, as he reveals in his "Note of Thanks:" "As one who's never studied Islam or been close to Iran -- and is of Hindu origin to boot -- I was especially grateful ... for whatever wisdom I could glean from others."

Without unraveling the entire plot or, in fact, much further ado, here are snapshots of the novel in his words.

"All across the city rose the long, slow, heart-torn cry of love -- "La ilaha'illa 'Llah" -- rose up, as if from a widow in her grief alone."

"...he got up and slipped out, through the southern entrance this time, into the riddle of lanes that snake around the Old City, this way and that, like a theological argument."

"Around them the same faces as usual were taking the same seats as usual, some near the back, with a view to a rapid escape, others near the front, in the hopes of a rapid ascent."

"Stories are ... mobile ... They change as we do, assume different colors depending on how we look at them; ... they grow up as we do. They aren't static narratives; they fit themselves around us like our shoes."

"...I toil in the pastures of the heartbroken. Becoming a doctor who can't heal when I wish only to be a bachelor once more."

"...and in a culture in which we have no gods but plenty of beliefs -- or, as commonly, no beliefs but plenty of gods."

"Who cares who wrote it? It is itself, like any child."

"The Sufi ideal is one of love, but it is not the love of the compassionate mother...he speaks of; it is the ravenous, consuming eros of the lover inflamed."

"The cry of te Sufi is, quite simply, the cry of abandoned love."
"For the Sufi, man is not fallen, just fallen asleep; we are not lost, just temporarily obscured. Like stars that can't be seen in mid-afternoon."

"Seville seemed almost and exercise in teaching one how to read: for those with eyes, there were Arab spirits hiding out even in the menus posted outside restaurants ("arroz," "naranja," "azucar"), even in the faint memory of the ghazal that haunted the guitars."

"I missed you more than I can say; more even than my silence could communicate."

The Remains of the Day
Now class, you have all completed your reading of Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day, I trust.
And no, Johnnie, watching the movie doesn't count.

Eleanor Roosevelt said "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."

Your assignment for today is to discuss this statement within the context of the book. Pay special attention to the concept of 'dignity' and the way in which Stevens uses it. He realizes that there are different meanings attached to the word, and more than once differentiates his own interpretation from those of others, but his own understanding changes as well.

(In other words: I'm working on it, I just haven't had enough time to sit down and do it justice.)

We watched Master and Commander last night. Which reminded me that on our last trip to San Diego, last April, we saw the ship used in the filming of this movie. At the time we had not seen the film yet, and in general I head in the opposite direction to the crowds. I did grab a few pictures from the pier though, and my main impression was of how small the ship seemed. :: In high school I devoured naval fiction; my preference was for Royal Navy yarns set in World War II, but I read anything all the way back to the Hornblowers and Bolithos, but for some reason, I never came across Patrick O'Brien before. I'm not entirely sure that I would want to read this genre now. :: I thoroughly enjoyed most of the music in the movie, including the cook's sour complaint along the lines of "There they go again, scraping away, and never a tune that you could dance even if you were drunk as a lord." (If you recall the exact line, I would be happy to replace it.) The classical music theme will serve as a segue to my lost topic; it started with a reference to the fact that as a student way back when I worked as a sales assistant in the Classical section of a CD store. Contemporary music of most flavors place a lot of emphasis on original music and new recordings, frowning somewhat on cover songs. (Obviously a generalization, but true enough for this purpose.) This means a big growth in the body of music out there. In classical music, new compositions are slow to gain recognition and acceptance, and the majority of new recordings are of established compositions, performed and re-interpreted by every artist; frequently multiple recordings of the same piece of music by the same artist will exist. Knowing your way around in a classical music store is therefore not only a question of knowing the composers and their works, but also of knowing the artists and the relative merits of each of their interpretations of each of the works of each of the composers. These days, speaking to a classical music afficionado, my preferences for artists performing say Beethoven's piano concerti would date me as effectively as glancing at my ever-multiplying grey hair. My love for the music is as strong as ever, but my easy access to every new recording and the opportunity to listen to them, as well as to "The Gramophone" was lost, and so I remain stuck more than a decade ago.

I've been tagged multiple times in a book meme, the most recent being Megha and Dharmendra.
So, I'll bend a rule of mine and complete the meme, and then my next post will deal with why I dislike memes, salving my conscience after the fact.

1. Total number of books I own:

Conservatively estimated around a thousand. (I would have had to up the estimate, but I have just donated three big boxes to the public library before we moved.)
Perhaps 200 of the remainder are textbooks and reference works: I have 21 dictionaries of various sorts.
Of the rest, about 100 can also be donated - they are "airport novels."
Another roughly 200 are mysteries: once I like an author I collect all their works.

So, about 500 works of "literature." That's not what the question asked, but it might lead you to the (correct) conclusion that my shelves are both categorized and alphabetized.

2. Last book I bought:

Baksheesh and Brahman - the Asian Journals of Joseph Campbell.
That is unless you count the Indian Travel Guides.

3. Last book I read:

The Hours by Michael Cunningham, which of course has meant that I am bumping Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf up on my Must-Read list.
I am currently reading Graham Greene's Travels with my Aunt. I started it years ago, perhaps picking up a book while visiting someone, and never finished it. I've thought about it periodically, and then turned it into action by adding it to my library list. I am so glad I did, because I am having a rollicking good time with it.

4. Five books I love:
Aah, now this is the tough one. Luckily it did not ask for the five books I love above all others.

• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.
  
• A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
  
• One Man's Bible by Gao Xingjian
  
• The Norton Anthology of Poetry
  
• Complete Shakespeare

5. Five people to tag:

This meme is such an old one that everyone who wanted to complete it would have done so by now. However, feel free to consider yourself tagged by me, and leave a comment if you do, so that I can link to you. If nothing else you will get some interesting traffic diverted to your blog :-)

Speaking of diverting traffic: If you are not yet reading RS' story blog, you are missing out. You should be going over to Whimsical Raconteur, aka Pieces of Life. Just don't blame me if you get hooked.

Yes, as those of you who periodically glance at my sidebar might have surmised, auntie has indeed joined a book group. Joined several, I should say, trying to find some that are actively and seriously discussing the books they read, and are reading books that I find of value. Which means that after a little while of lurking, I have left the majority of the groups.

These groups are online entities of course, as you have no doubt gathered from the preceding bit. I am now actively participating in a group that reads Booker Prize winners and those novels that were shortlisted for the same prize, and I am lurking while catching up on the reading for another group on 19th Century literature.

Now of course I wouldn't have had to find groups to join if I could have managed to get some discussion going here about the stuff I'm reading; I guess my audience (that's you) either do not share my taste in books, or do not like to talk about their reading, or like to compartmentalize their activities: Now I'm reading blogs, and now I'm reading books, and ne'er the twain shall meet.

And that of course is everyone's right to decide how to spend their time and what they want to get out of their experiences. In the meantime I am having such fun with Iris Murdoch's "The Nice and the Good" that I have almost forgotten to sulk about the fact that the group has already read most of the books I have been burning to talk about at some stage in the past.

Speaking of reading, I ran across a Yale Journal of Ethics interview with Camille Paglia. She is deliciously controversial, mostly on the topic of feminism where she manages to put both men and women's noses out of joint, but she certainly has strong opinions on a wide range of topics.

"The greatness of a work is defined by how much influence it’s had over other work and other artists. It’s artists who make the canon, not critics.
I think it is crucial that college education be about the past, not about the present. The fundamental error of a lot of educational reform in the last twenty years has been a mad panic to be relevant. But relevance in the classroom is created by the teacher in dealing with great works of the past. The teachers should constantly be trying to tie in that great work to the students’ lives and things that are happening now. That is the way you make relevance."

"Instruction at the college level should begin in the most remote past and only barely touch the present. No teacher has any business telling the young about the present: the young are the present and they are making the future day by day. Every teacher, the moment that he or she steps from the classroom, is already history."

If you want to read more, and you're prepared for her outspoken and often graphic views on everything from the demasculinization of men in the Ivy League to why women should pose for Playboy, go and read the entire interview.

The Nice and The GoodThere are many elements in The Nice and the Good that might appear unrealistic; too idyllic, too fantastic, too melodramatic, too far-fetched to be true. In other words, at the start the book conveys the feeling that it is a typical Summer read; interesting, amusing but not demanding.

It might take a couple of beats before events start to sink in, and the realization that this is very real indeed, with situations ripped from real life. Take the relationship between Jessica and Ducane which had fizzled out some time ago, whereafter they had remained "friends," seeing one another on a non-physical basis.

"He became gradually and sadly aware that she did not share his newfound liberty. He had not set her free. She was still in love with him ... Her time consisted of seeing him, waiting, and seeing him again, of presence, absence, presence. She watched him anxiously, muting her love, instinctively afraid of making him feel trapped or guilty."

The novel continues in this curious fashion, where elements of idyll are intermingled with reality, and where the reader ends up being exasperated with Uncle Theo and Willy Kost, and Casie, wishing the twins were theirs, wanting to shake Barbara and Pierce, and shouting at Ducane about Jessica and McGrath, sneering at Biranne, and shouting at Paula about Eric.

Of course these are trivial observations about the book; the themes are broad and important, and Iris Murdoch's background teaching philosophy at Oxford is evident throughout this novel which at its core tries to establish what is good, and who is good.

Travels with my Aunt

The Nice and The Good

The Counterlife Travels with My Aunt was published in 1968, the same year as The Nice and The Good. This and the fact that they are both novels by highly regarded British authors should allow one some levels of comparison.
When I started Travels with My Aunt I had no idea that I will be reading the Iris Murdoch next, because I had not yet stumbled across the book group. This meant that I had paid far less attention to the questions of "What is good?" and "Who is good?" than I might have done otherwise.
On this point alone the book begs a second reading. An ultra-conventional retired bank manager is swept up into the unconventional lifestyle (and morals) of his aunt, and slowly finds himself valuing less and less his earlier state.
It is not a comedy, but it is peppered with highly comical - at times farcical - situations that are immediately funny, and ironies that more slowly tickle one on a different level, such as his idea that "travels" with his aunt would consist of pleasant outings to seaside towns which is suddenly overturned by her announcement that they are going to Istanbul on the Orient Express.
Of course, much of the travel is a personal journey, discovering his own history, and exploring his life.

A favorite quote:

"One's life is more formed, I sometimes think, by books than by human beings: it is out of books one learns about love and pain at second hand. Even if we have the happy chance to fall in love, it is because we have been conditioned by what we have read, and if I had never known love at all, perhaps it was because my father's library had not contained the right books."

Travels with my Aunt is far more tied to the era than the Murdoch, although not in a deliberate way; it is merely true that many of the details were unique to that period, such as the airport arrangements, the details of the Orient Express, the regulations, the shape of the world, and even the precise expression of the situations.
The Nice and The Good on the other hand does not seem to belong to any particular era, apart from the fact that the Second World War was in the recent enough past that the adult males all had seen some service in one way or another.
The Counterlife, set in 1978 was published in 1986. This is more difficult to classify, since parts of it are inextricably tied to the period around 1978, and others are universally valid.
Reading it as I did immediately following The Nice and The Good, I automatically latched onto the theme of "Good," but there are a great number of additional themes and situations that seem relevant too. This is where I wish that there were a group where everyone was reading everything synchronously, so that I could run around with my finger closed in the book crying "Look what I've found!"

From The Counterlife:

"Contrary to what you thought, I was never so disdainful of the restrictions under which you flourished and the boundaries you observed as you were of the excessive liberties you imagined me taking."

"[Henry] amazed that he is not in any way guilty or tormented by being so joyously unfaithful to Carol. He wonders how someone who tries to hard to be so good, who is good, can be doing this so easily."

- and my personal favorite:

"He was somehow not quite coarse enough to bow to his desires, and yet not quite fine enough to transcend them."

The Unbearable
Lightness of BeingEternal return, or eternal recurrence, is the idea that everything, everyone and every situation will recur, exactly as it happened before, and that time is cyclical and not linear.

Kundera explores this theme, pitting the implications of actions in the event that time is linear, against those in the event that time is cyclical.

Of course, when the movie was first released I had no idea about these concepts. It was screened in South Africa with an age restriction of 2-21, and it became a challenge to see who could manage to get in to see the movie. Once inside, the majority of the audience would sit waiting for the few graphic scenes, and in general share a perplexity about the rest of the movie.

Age does not necessarily bring wisdom and maturity, but most of us do benefit a little in these respects as the years advance...

I am only about fifty pages into the book at this stage, but at this stage Kundera has delineated the cons for both situations.

In the event that time is linear, and everything occurs only once, we have no way to try out choices and judge which are best. Life becomes much more of a gamble, e.g. when deciding whether or not to chase after the girl once she has left you, you are never sure whether the pain might have disappeared after a week or a month and you might not have missed her at all in the end, or whether it would have continued worsening. Decisions have to be made based on the perceived probability of their outcomes, just as in gambling.

On the other hand, if everything repeats over and over again, everything loses its impact and significance. A joyous moment repeated a thousand times loses its freshness and delight; a moment of horror constantly repeated results in dulled senses and bored acceptance.

How would you like it if your life endlessly repeated, without the opportunity to alter the circumstances - you would exist forever, but forever in the same way, going through the same motions?

The Booker Prize Longlist was announced today. Shorter than usual, with only seventeen novels making it in what the chairman of the judges referred to as the "richest year ... since the launch of the Booker Prize in 1969."

The shortlist will be revealed on September 8th, and the winner is to be announced on October 10th.

The list (which I may or may not later hyperlink and illustrate):

• Aw, Tash - The Harmony Silk Factory
  
• Banville, John - The Sea
  
• Barnes, Julian - Arthur & George
  
• Barry, Sebastian - A Long Long Way
  
• Coetzee, J.M. - Slow Man
  
• Cusk, Rachel - In the Fold
  
• Ishiguro, Kazuo - Never Let Me Go
  
• Jacobson, Dan - All For Love
  
• Lewycka, Marina - A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian
  
• Mantel, Hilary - Beyond Black
  
• McEwan, Ian - Saturday
  
• Meek, James - The People’s Act of Love
  
• Rushdie, Salman - Shalimar The Clown
  
• Smith, Ali - The Accidental
  
• Smith, Zadie - On Beauty
  
• Thompson, Harry - This Thing Of Darkness
  
• Wall, William - This Is The Country
  

Of course, I am still sulking that I will not be living in the UK for the next month, and would not need to work. Because if I had been at loose ends in Britain, I could have tried this.
Potentially the greatest advantage there would be getting my hands on all those lovely books, especially considering that two of them will not even be published until September!

The Harmony Silk Factory - Tash Aw		[First time author] A Malayan mystery set in 1940, it is the story of Johnny Lim, a mysterious figure whose life is described in three different ways by three different narrators.
The Sea - John Banville		[Shortlisted in 1989 for "The Book of Evidence"] Narrator Max Morden revisits an Irish coastal resort where, as a child, he encountered the Grace family, who mysteriously changed his life.
Arthur and George - Julian Barnes		[Shortlisted in 1984 for "Flaubert's Parrot" and in 1998 for "England, England"] Writer Arthur (Conan Doyle) and solicitor George are brought together by a sequence of sensational events in 19th Century Britain.
A Long Long Way - Sebastian Barry		Camaraderie and humour sustain the Royal Dublin Fusiliers as they are caught up in the events of the Easter Rising in Ireland.
Slow Man - J.M. Coetzee		[Nobel Literature Laureate. Won the Booker Prize in 1983 with "The Life and Times of Michael K." and again in 1999 with "Disgrace"] An amputee's feelings for his nurse are complicated by the arrival of a celebrated Australian novelist.