Carlos' 999 challenge

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Carlos' 999 challenge

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1CarlosMcRey
Editado: Dez 11, 2008, 2:02 pm

I'll be starting my 999 challenge as soon as I finish my current 888 challenge. At this point I'm still trying to figure out all the categories and am mostly in brainstorming mode. This is what I've got so far:

I. Gauchos y Porteños
Books by Argentine authors and about Argentina, with a minor emphasis on gauchesco literature.

II. Orientales y Otros Americanos
Orientales is an antiquated term for Uruguayos. This will be a more general category for Latin American authors and books.

III. Eastern European Authors
Nabokov, Kafka, Schulz, Babel, and other Eastern European authors. The inclusion of Kafka, Schulz, and Babel made me consider giving this category a minor emphasis on Jewish authors, but I'm still undecided.

IV. Obscure Works
Any work in my library that is shared with 10 or less people. I'll leave this category open, so what will matter is how many people list it at the time I start it.

V. Straight (NBSO) Horror: All the King's Men
VI. Queer (NBSO) Horror: Goths and Weirdos

NBSO = Not By Sexual Orientation. By straight horror, I'm thinking of mainstream contemporary horror, the best example of which is Stephen King, though I'll be trying to read a pretty broad range of authors within this area. The other category is for fiction that has a more marginal claim on horror, such as modern gothics (i.e. Shirley Jackson) and weird fiction (i.e. Liggoti, Aickman).

VII. Audiobooks

Because the library has a good selection and they're great for a daily commute or listening to while working out and they take some pressure off having to read 81 entire books.

VIII. Thugs, Templars, Illuminati
More of a broad secret societies category, with an emphasis on Thuggee. Might plug the Ramaseeana in there and give myself credit for reading just a fraction of it, since the thing is huge. But that remains to be seen.

IX. Lighter Fare

I was originally going to call this one Humor, but I figured I'd throw in YA, graphic novels, comic strip books, etc.--anything to balance my reading material out a bit. :)

2LisaMorr
Nov 8, 2008, 2:56 pm

Carlos,
Love your categories - especially Obscure Works and Templars/Illuminati. I may augment my categories, or add some of your titles to my Other category. I've only read a couple of books associated with Templars/Illuminati, but have many TBR. I'm not exactly sure of the "Thug" meaning - can you shed some light? Thanks.

3CarlosMcRey
Nov 8, 2008, 3:48 pm

Thugs refers to Thuggee/Thugee, which was an Indian secret society that was broken up by the British in the 19th century. It's actually where the word "thug" comes from. I'd been considering devoting a whole category to them, but decided that would be a bit much.

4shootingstarr7
Nov 8, 2008, 4:02 pm

You have some of the best categories I've seen so far- it all looks incredibly ambitious.

5LisaMorr
Nov 8, 2008, 4:22 pm

Carlos - thanks, I thought that was it, but just surprised to see it grouped with Templars/Illuminati - but now I understand the secret society connection. Cool! I'll definitely keep track of your titles, as I'm sure I'll add to my TBR pile.

6missporkchop
Nov 8, 2008, 4:50 pm

What a great set of categories! I'll be interested to see what books you end up choosing.

7billiejean
Nov 9, 2008, 2:03 am

I have enjoyed following your 888 challenge and look forward to following your 999 challenge, too.
--BJ

8CarlosMcRey
Nov 9, 2008, 7:33 pm

Thanks, everybody. I think I was going to make them all sound colorful but gave up when I realized some of them might come off a bit forced.

9CarlosMcRey
Editado: Abr 28, 2009, 10:24 pm

I was going to wait, but the more I look at my TBR pile the more I think I should at least jot down some ideas.


I. Gauchos y Porteños
1. El gaucho Martin Fierro
2. Don Segundo Sombra
3. Facundo
4. La guerra gaucha
5. El juguete rabioso
6. Plata quemada
7. El cantor de tango
8. Cola de lagartija
9. El tunel

10CarlosMcRey
Editado: Dez 12, 2009, 12:18 am

II. Orientales y Otros Americanos
1. Del amor y otros demonios (Colombiano)
2. Memoria del fuego: Los nacimientos (Uruguayo)
3. El pozo - Los adioses (Uruguayo)
4. Buzon de tiempo (Uruguayo)
5. Hijo de hombre (Paraguayo)
6. La fiesta del chivo (Peruano)
7. El delirio de Turing (Boliviano)
8. Amberes (Chileno)
9. Los mejores cuentos de Rubén Darío (Nicaragüense)
EC. La puta de Babilonia

13CarlosMcRey
Editado: Nov 17, 2009, 10:34 pm


V. Straight (NBSO) Horror: All the King's Men
1. Mr. X
2. A Lower Deep
3. The Keep
4. The Keeper
5. Creepers
6. Dead City
7. The Rising
8. The Ruins
9. Ghost Story

14CarlosMcRey
Editado: Nov 8, 2009, 4:36 am


VI. Queer (NBSO) Horror: Goths and Weirdos
1. Seven Gothic Tales (Scandinavian gothic)
2. We Have Always Lived in the Castle (American gothic)
3. The Keep (postmodern gothic)
4. Titus Groan (weird gothic fantasy)
5. The Ceremonies (weird fiction)
6. Cold Hand in Mine (weird fiction)
7. Dark Ladies (weird fiction)
8. In the Penny Arcade (light weird fiction)
9. The Somnambulist (weird historical fiction)
EC. In the Valley of the Kings

18nmhale
Editado: Nov 9, 2008, 10:36 pm

Very intriguing categories. I'm especially interested in the first two. I like reading South American authors, and I've never heard of a literary category called gauchecos (your own term?) or Uruguayans being called Orientales. I'll be curious to see what goes on the list.

I have read one of the books you've already mentioned - Del Amor y Otros Demonios. I'm a huge Marquez fan, although that one wasn't one of my favorites.

19CarlosMcRey
Nov 10, 2008, 3:16 am

I picked up the idea of gauchesco literature from I don't know where, but it refers to works (mostly Argentine) about gauchos. Martin Fierro is sort of the classic example.

The term Orientales is pretty archaic, and it may stretch back to the 19th century before Uruguay was a separate nation and was referred to as the "Banda Oriental" (Eastern Strip). Off the top of my head, I can think of two references, one in Borges' "The Elder Lady" where he describes how the elderly lady's language is so archaic that she still refers to Uruguayans as Orientales--the other is in a collection I read recently, 20 años con Inodoro Pereyra, which is a comic strip about a gaucho. It's used in a joke regarding the meaning of Orientales as Middle Easterners vs. Orientales as Uruguayans.

I just got into Marquez last year, having read Cien años de Soledad and Cronica de una Muerte Anunciada.

20nmhale
Nov 10, 2008, 11:41 am

I'll have to look into Martin Fierro. I don't believe I've read anything about gauchos before (scanning my brain, trying to think ...)

One Hundred Years of Solitude is my favorite! I read it in English. I don't know if my Spanish could live up to that one. I've also read Chronicle of a Death Foretold. That was the first book by him that I read.

21cmbohn
Nov 10, 2008, 12:37 pm

I just added We Have Always Lived in the Castle to my TBR list. I've heard of this one before, but never read it. Sounds creepy and good.

22RidgewayGirl
Dez 2, 2008, 4:29 pm

Would you consider writing brief reviews for the South American books in your challenge? Many of them will be unfamiliar to some of us and would love to be able to try one or two that sound intriguing. I recognized Marquez, but the rest are embarrassingly unknown.

23CarlosMcRey
Dez 2, 2008, 5:01 pm

Certainly. I've been trying to write reviews of all the books in my current challenge, though I have to admit I'm at under 100% on that right now.

24CarlosMcRey
Editado: Dez 13, 2008, 1:35 pm

I was looking at Ramaseeana last night and decided I'd go ahead and add it. I was reluctant to do so, because a) it's a googlebook, so I'd be reading it on the computer, and b) it's long. I realized last night that it was only 785 pages long, which doesn't sound that intimidating to me after finishing The Unabridged Edgar Allan Poe earlier this year. That was a monstrosity. I'll take my time doing it, though, since I can only read off a monitor for so long.

25VisibleGhost
Dez 13, 2008, 3:44 pm

Carlos, for your VI category here's a couple you may have read but I'll mention them anyway. Both are very strange but not quite gothic.

Viriconium, M. John Harrison
The Manuscript Found in Saragossa, Jan Potocki

I recently picked up a translated into English copy of Turing's Delirium by Edmundo Paz Soldan who is from Bolivia. I haven't read it yet but was wondering if you might have read any of his work or have any insights on him?

26CarlosMcRey
Editado: Dez 13, 2008, 10:00 pm

Funny. Just yesterday, I was thinking I should find a work from a Bolivian author, but didn't really know where to start. The description of Turing's Delirium sounds really fascinating, as do some of his other works. My local library carries El Delirio de Turing, so I'm going to add it to the list. Thanks!

My category VI is pretty broad, so I think The Manuscript found in Saragossa would fit in, though I might end up reading it as part of Eastern European Authors.

I have already read Viriconium, which was quite good. I was going to read Light for this year's challenge, but ended up dropping it. Maybe I'll have to sneak it in next year.

Thanks for the suggestions.

27CarlosMcRey
Editado: Jan 1, 2009, 4:21 am

Ah, Happy New Year, everyone. I thought I'd do something a little different this year. For the 888 challenge I only posted when I finished a book and sort of described my first impressions. I'm still going to do that this year, but I'm also going to post when I start a book, with a brief mention of what made me decide to read it, how long it's been sitting on my shelves, what I expect, etc. When I start a book, I'm going to edit it on the list so it shows up italicized and bracketed by stars. Then, when I'm done, the name will be crossed out, like last year.

28CarlosMcRey
Editado: Jan 31, 2009, 7:36 pm

Book started: Confessions of a Thug
Category: Thugs 'n Templars

I've decided to just wade right into the thug end of my Thugs, Templars, Illuminati category, starting with this rather large 19th century novel. I'd actually started it before, a couple of years ago, without getting more than a few chapters in.

So far, I've read the two introductions and the first chapter. The author alleges that the novel was based on interviews with an apprehended Thug, but I wonder how much is fictional. Interestingly, the introductions are somewhat contradictory. The 1837 intro claims the novel was written out of a desire to make the rest of the world aware of what was happening in India, but in the 1873 intro, Taylor suggests he wrote it on something of a whim while he was bored. It certainly doesn't add to the reliability of the claims on the novel as recording historical fact.

29CarlosMcRey
Editado: Jan 10, 2009, 3:16 am

Book started: Graphic Classics: H. P. Lovecraft
Category: Lighter Fare

This is actually a re-read, but since there's no review up, I figured it was a good opportunity to dust it off and get a fresh look at it before writing the review. So far, I've read all the way through to "Herbert West - Reanimator." I quite liked it; the artists really emphasize the twisted humor of the original.

30CarlosMcRey
Editado: Jan 18, 2009, 10:04 pm


1. Graphic Classics: H.P. Lovecraft - finished 1/7/09

First book of the challenge down. The collection is sort of scatter-shot. There are some strong adaptations, particularly "Herbert West - Reanimator" and Lisa Weber's adaptation of "The Cats of Ulthar." Some of the others feel a bit like missed opportunities, like John Coulhart's illustration of a dying Wilbur Whately, which will make you wish his take on "The Dunwich Horror" had been part of the book.

Mine is the first edition copy, and I think they've actually improved the collection for the second edition. (The 2nd has Cthulhu on the cover.)

31CarlosMcRey
Jan 10, 2009, 2:43 am

Book Started: La muerte y su traje (Death and its Suit)
Category: Obscure Works
Shared with: 0

I'm actually a little surprised by how obscure this one is. Not only does nobody else on LT list a copy of this work, but nobody else lists any work by Santiago Dabove.

I encountered Dabove in Borges' Antologia de la Literatura Fantastica, which features his story "Ser Polvo." (Being Dust) Dabove was a contemporary and friend of Borges, who ensured that Dabove's short stories were posthumously collected and published. From the introduction and prologue, he sounds like something of an interesting character.

I'm still working on Confessions of a Thug. It's sort of slow going. I'm enjoying it, but the style makes it hard for me to read much in one sitting.

32CarlosMcRey
Jan 18, 2009, 9:46 pm


2. Confessions of a Thug by Philip Taylor - finished 1/16/09

In this novel, an unidentified interviewer speaks with Ameer Ali, who recounts his life and career as a Thug, a strangler and robber of travellers. I find it interesting that the first novel on the subject (which this is) presents it from the point of view of the criminal. I wonder if the ocassional comments from the English interviewer, which always come off a bit wooden, are meant to reassure the reader that the morality of the West is still in control. Regardless, Ameer Ali comes off as something of a heroic figure, a proud and brave criminal living by his cunning and strength, a cross between Sinbad the Sailor and Tony Soprano. This is principally a story of adventure, and Ameer Ali relates his adventures as a Thug as proudly as her relates his time as a Pindari, leading men in battle to extort tribute from towns and cities.

I'm not sure how the novel fits into the picture of India, Thuggee and the British response to both. On the one hand, the novel strays away from the portrayal of Thuggee as a "singular occupation" as I've seen it presented elsewhere. As I read it, Thuggee is just banditry by other means (and a different name). Even the idea of bandits pretending to be friendly to murder and rob a traveller isn't particularly exotic--a similar sort of bandit shows up in the Germany of Lewis' The Monk. On the other hand, Confessions paints an image of India as a corrupt and lawless place, where the Thugs' ordinariness reflects the willingness of anyone, even those in authority, to use subterfuge or violence for personal gain. British Law, though imposed by force, could be justified as improving the lives of those it was being imposed on. (Codified later as "The White Man's Burden" IIRC.)

33CarlosMcRey
Editado: Jan 31, 2009, 7:38 pm

Book started: The Deceivers
Category: Thugs 'n Templars

This seems like a good follow up to Confessions of a Thug, since a lot of the vocabulary and place names are still fresh in my head. (Although how much the geography will overlap remains to be seen.) This novel, written over a 100 years later, tells the story from the point of view of a British officer. It'll be interesting to see how some of the same material is treated.

34CarlosMcRey
Editado: Maio 2, 2009, 7:47 pm


3. La muerte y su traje by Santiago Dabove - finished 1/18/09

Based on his stories, Santiago Dabove seems to have been quite the eccentric. There's an obvious debt to Poe and Maupassant in their somewhat morbid and surreal themes. Some of them have elements of science fiction, such as "El experimento de Varinksy" which shares elements with Frankenstein and Poe's "Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar." (Though it also reminded me a bit of "Herbert West - Reanimator.") Dabove was apparently friends with Borges and Macedonio Fernandez, and his fiction does seem like a more decadent take on Borges'. Overall, a pretty good collection of weird fiction, but not as radical as Borges.

35CarlosMcRey
Jan 18, 2009, 11:31 pm

Book Started: Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass
Category: Eastern European Authors
Country: Poland

Speaking of eccentrics... I first heard of Bruno Schulz from Thomas Ligotti and was quite captivated with The Street of Crocodiles. Sanatorium is his second and last collection. (He was murdered by a Gestapo officer during WWII and what had been written of his only novel The Messiah lost to history.) I've only read the introduction so far but am quite eager to get back into Schulz' world of haunting magical imagery and metaphors.

36CarlosMcRey
Jan 21, 2009, 2:09 am

Book Started: The Yiddish Policemen's Union
Category: Audiobooks

Decided to pop this in the car today when I went out to run some errands. Haven't gotten too far, but I'm digging it so far. Since this is the audiobook, no glossary, so I'll have to see if that is available on line. (Or check the book out of the library for its glossary.)

37LisaMorr
Jan 21, 2009, 6:52 am

I'm really enjoying your thread Carlos. I would definitely like to read Confessions of a Thug, and even though it's obscure, I'm hoping to find La Muerte y Su Traje someday, translated of course.

38CarlosMcRey
Jan 21, 2009, 2:53 pm

One book I'd recommend is The Book of Fantasy, which is a translation of Antologia de Literatura Fantastica and includes the Dabove story "Being Dust" as well as works from several authors I'd never heard of.

39CarlosMcRey
Editado: Maio 2, 2009, 7:50 pm


4. The Deceivers by John Masters - finished 1/23/09

The story of William Savage, a captain of the British East India company, who inflitrates the Deceivers (Thuggee) in order to bring them to justice and free the Indian subcontinent from their reign of terror.

As expected, this covers some of the same ground as Confessions of a Thug with some subtle (mostly) differences. To begin with, the deity goes from being Bhowanee (probably Bhavani) to Kali. Also, the Thuggee origin story has been subtly ordered: Confessions features a version where the deity has to stop mankind from overpopulating the earth, while Deceivers features elements borrowed from the Devi Mahatmya. I was struck especially by how Masters' thugs seem to be much more religious and superstitious than Meadows Taylor's. In fact, though over twice the length as the later novel, I'm pretty sure Bhowanee gets named fewer times than Kali does. (And Ameer Ali seems to believe more in his own bravery and cunning than in omens or rituals.) Deceivers does create a greater impression of Thuggee as a "singular occupation" that required special effort to control. And, since Deceivers has a straightforward hero, it's a somewhat more conventional narrative.

It's a fairly good story, with a noble hero having to struggle against a great evil, which threatens him both physically and spiritually. I felt some of Savage's internal conflicts were not entirely convincing, which made him a little less compelling a hero than he should have been. The idea is that he's drawn into the life of the Thuggee, to where he struggles with choosing to give up that life. But Masters never makes salient what Savage finds so tempting about the life, casting it instead as a sort of pro-forma spiritual struggle between Kali and Christ within his heart. (Perhaps this would have been more powerful if I hadn't previously read Ameer Ali's more plausible description of the appeals of the Thug life.)

At this point, I'm debating whether to add Simmons' Song of Kali this category. (It'd be a re-read.) His bad guys aren't Thugs, but are obviously based on them. Of course, there's still some nonfiction works I could delve into first.

40fannyprice
Jan 25, 2009, 5:32 pm

>30 CarlosMcRey:, I found the same scattershot quality in the Gothic Classics: Graphic Classics Volume 14 collection. Some, like the adaptation of J. Sheridan Le Fanu's "Camilla," were fantastic, with the illustrations perfectly suiting the story. Others, like the adaptation of Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, were missed opportunities, but opposite the way I think you meant. Overall, I was not impressed and I doubt I will buy more of these kinds of books.

41CarlosMcRey
Jan 25, 2009, 8:19 pm

I had a similar reaction to the Gothic Classics volume, which I read last year. (Abbey was a disappointment, but the real head-scratcher for me was "At the Gate," which didn't seem gothic at all.) I actually looked through the 2nd edition of the Lovecraft volume when I was in a bookstore recently, and got the impression it was a much better collection. I probably would have been better off waiting for the 2nd edition to come out instead of buying it when it first came out. So, to be charitable, I think they might be improving. Still, caveat emptor--I probably won't buy another one unless I've had the chance to skim it at the bookstore first. (Gothic Classics was the library's copy.)

42fannyprice
Jan 25, 2009, 8:22 pm

>41 CarlosMcRey:, Concur that the inclusion of "At the Gate" was very odd.

43CarlosMcRey
Editado: Jan 26, 2009, 9:55 pm

Just some random musing for the moment:

I once had a discussion with someone about the movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and how to describe the supernatural elements. He had described the movie as surreal, but I had insisted that it was more like magical realism. My argument was that surrealism tends to reflect the fractured logic and imagery of dreams, while magic realism involves incorporating fantastic elements as extensions of a realistic narrative. (Although, I'm not certain that's the best description of magic realism.)

This all came back to me while reading Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass. I've got it tagged in my library as both weird fiction and surreal, but I'm wondering if it should be tagged as magical realism instead of or alongside weird fiction.

If one opts for a narrow definition of the weird tale or magic realism, it's obvious Schulz doesn't really count as either. That is, he's neither part of an early 20th Century set of authors publishing in Weird Tales magazine nor is he a Latin American (probably Caribbean) author publishing after 1960 or so.

I usually try to be more expansive with both of those labels. So, weird fiction is a category of fiction where the everyday existence is brought into contact with something decidedly uncanny, sometimes an entire strange reality. This intrusion into the normal is by its nature threatening, and so the pervasive mood is one of dread and unacannines. (So, for example, Lovecraft's stories feature entities whose very presence will drive a man insane.)

Magical realism, on the other hand, centers on a reality so rich in essence, that everyday existence finds unexpected fantastic outlets of expression. Those supernatural outbursts are not intrusions into so much as expressions of the everyday reality. (For example, the familial bond can cause a murdered son's blood to flow directly towards his family's home.)

But Schulz' stories sometimes seem to operate on both levels at the same time. There's certainly a surreal quality to be sure. And sometimes the supernatural seems to be an intrusion, quite threatening and uncanny. At other times, it appears to be a flowering of some normal though concealed aspect of the everyday.

Writing this out rather convinces me to give it both tags, since I think the world featured in his fictions is so permeable as to make percolations both into and out of the everyday through the fantastic sort of inevitable.

I don't know if this is particularly interesting to anybody else. I find the WF/MR distinction an interesting way to think about the way fantastic or supernatural elements are used in a story.

44CarlosMcRey
Editado: Maio 2, 2009, 7:50 pm


5. Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass by Bruno Schulz - finished 1/26/09

I am simply calling it The Book without any epithets or qualifications, and in this sobriety there is a shade of helplessness, a silent capitulation before the vastness of the transcendental, for no word, no allusion, can adequately suggest the shiver of fear, the presentiment of a thing without name that exceeds all our capacity for wonder. How could an accumulation of adjectives or a richness of epithets help when one is faced with this splendiferous thing? Besides, any true reader--and this story is only addressed to him--will understand me anyway when I look him straight in the eye and try to communicate my meaning. A short sharp look or a light clasp of his hand will stir him into awareness, and he will blink in rapture at the brilliance of The Book. For, under the imaginary table that separates me from my readers, don't we secretly clasp each other's hands?

And that's just the first paragraph of the first story! Is there really anything else I can add? Would it be a poor metaphor to say I find Schulz' prose like some sort of exotic drug, that even to type the above gives me a strange sort of dizzy joy?

45nmhale
Jan 26, 2009, 9:00 pm

I was quite interested in your analysis. In fact, I always find your posts to be intriguing, from the books you read to the reviews you write. You really read some interesting subgenres that I've never heard of or considered before.

Your definition of magical realism seems spot on to me. I've never delved too deeply into what identifies magical realism. I've always just said that it's a type of book where the supernatural is presented side by side with ultra realistic life, but when the unnatural elements occur, they are accepted as part of regular life. I think I like your explanation better. :)

Since I don't often read what you class as weird fiction, I can't compare. However, I am now tempted to try out some of the authors that you list in your weird fiction category.

46avatiakh
Jan 27, 2009, 6:04 pm

Timely of you to post on Bruno Schulz as I'm almost finished reading David Grossman's See Under: Love a fascinating and also difficult (for me anyway) read where one section is devoted to a fantastical tale of Bruno Schulz's escape from the Nazis and life in the ocean as a fish with no memories. I wonder if you have read this book, I know that I'm very keen now to read The Street of Crocodiles and some Kafka.

47CarlosMcRey
Jan 27, 2009, 9:22 pm

#45 nmhale, thanks. I'm glad you found it interesting. If you're into short stories, I'd recommend one of the Weird Tales anthologies, such as Weird Tales: The Magazine That Never Dies or The Best of Weird Tales, as a good start for weird fiction. Or for older stuff, I sort of like the Lovecraft-themed anthologies, such as H.P. Lovecraft's Favorite Weird Tales.

#46 avatiakh, I'd never heard of that book, but it does sound quite fascinating. A book I read last year, The Secret Life of Puppets, speculated on what would have happened if Schulz had escaped to America, and how he might have been sort of "exoticized." (Comparisons to Nabokov and I.B. Singer) He's a writer that's definitely worth reading.

48CarlosMcRey
Editado: Jan 31, 2009, 7:35 pm

Book Started: Del amor y otros demonios
Category: Orientales y otros Americanos
Nationality: Colombiano

I only started reading Garcia Marquez last year, starting with One Hundred Years of Solitude and continuing with Cronica de una muerte anunciada. I had some skepticism going in--a symptom of mine with writers that are household words...oh, can the writer really live up to his reputation--but was quite captivated by both books. I'm about a quarter of the way into Amor, and though I'm enjoying it, it hasn't quite hooked me yet the way the other two did.

Book Started: Children of Kali
Category: Thugs 'n Templars

This is a re-read for me, but I figured I'd get more out of it if reading it with other works on Thuggee. Really engaging read. Inspired by a short conversation with a London bookseller, the author decides to go to India to find out more about Thuggee and the British officer who brought it down. He also looks to find out more about Veerappan, a modern day Robin Hood he sees as having some similarity to the thugs of old. This is my favorite thug book so far.

49CarlosMcRey
Jan 28, 2009, 3:32 pm

(Possible IJToD deleted scene)

Thug #3: You know what's cool? I'm Indian, and you're Indiana.

Indiana: Um, yeah, whatever.
(Draws pistol, shoots Thug #3.)

50CarlosMcRey
Jan 29, 2009, 4:32 am


6. Children of Kali by Kevin Rushby - finished 1/28/09

I'm a geek. When I was in college, I had a friend who was trying to put together a GURPS Illuminati campaign. I decided to go him one better and create one with multiple secret societies. Of course, it was a concept I'd stolen from the INWO card game. I'd read The Illuminatus! Trilogy by this point, after several years of only creating the impression that I'd done so by acting paranoid and muttering something in German every time the subject came up. (It really works!)

My college library wasn't big, but it did have a handful of books on secret societies and conspiracy theories, all of which I checked out. (The only one I can recall now is Akron Daraul's Secret Societies.) It was in those books that I first read about the Thuggee. I found them and their patron goddess, Kali, interesting enough that I decided to make them one of the five secret societies vying for world domination in my game. (Why 5? Because it's an important number for the Illuminati and because it was the number of survivors from the destruction of the Shao-Lin temple.)

I was particularly struck with some of the descriptions of thugs which emphasized not their bloodthirstiness but their upstanding social and moral character. One European had stated something along the lines that when they found out some Indian acquaintance was a thug, they were surprised, but still felt that person trustworthy in every regard except their Thuggee activities. It also appeared that the thugs ascribed their defeat to having forsaken some the rules that Kali had laid down for them. Curiously moral, these evil cultists, not at all like the picture I got from Indiana Jones or Gunga Din. I was struck by the idea of men involved in a cult doing things beyond the pale, who could turn around and pass not just as ordinary, but as the most upstanding men in their society. This sounded like a real secret society, and one who everyone seemed pretty clear had been wiped out, which in paranoid Illuminati-style terms was just an indication of how brilliant a secret society they were.

Even though the campaign never took place (nor my friend's), I remained fascinated with Thuggee. There wasn't much information to be found beyond what I'd read in those few books, except for a couple of novels that were hard to find. (In that pre-Amazon age.) I did read up more on Kali, who I found a fascinating and strangely moving spiritual symbol.

Occassionally, I'd do an internet search under thuggee or Kali. One day, it turned up a journal article by an academic named Parama Roy: "Discovering India, Imagining Thuggee" The paper looked at a lot of the existing documentation on Thuggee and came to what was for me a startling conclusion: the whole thing was to a certain degree a British invention, driven by Western notions of an exotic East, misconceptions, misunderstandings, a need to assert imperial authority, etc.

Instead of de-romanticizing Thuggee for me, it actually deepened my fascination. Suddenly, Thuggee wasn't just a cult but had the potential for being something of a mirror, a reflection of the colonizers' darkest notions of violence and power. This threw certain curious mirrorings into question for me. The strangles had all been hung, taking some interest in making sure good knots were used. Sleeman, the big anti-Thug crusader, had seemed like something of a thug himself, a morally upstanding man who had used deception and violence for his own ends. And, of course, Kali had started out with not one but two thugs. (Adam and Steve?) Thuggee had taken an unexpected turn; it had gone postmodern.

I wouldn't call them an obsession, but since then, there never too far out of mind. Sometimes they seem to crop up in unexpected place. I've thought of assembling a list of all the secret Thuggee movies. There's the Believer, with Ryan Gosling as an orthodox Jew who's also a neo-Nazi; that mirroring of victim/killer and meditation on holy violence definitely pegs it in this category. At the top, of course, would be Bill Paxton's Frailty, which is the probably the greatest Thuggee movie ever made. (No, seriously, does it make sense any other way?)

Oh, the book, that's right. I just finished this book, and I was going to say a few things about it. I don't know if this is the best book about Thuggee, but it's certainly the one I've enjoyed most so far. The author decides to go to India to investigate both the history of the thugs and modern day criminality. He doesn't find what he's looking for, but what he does is pretty interesting. This is really a book to read twice (this is my second time), the first to get frustrated at what the author doesn't find, the second to relax and enjoy the trip and the author's observations.

51CarlosMcRey
Editado: Maio 2, 2009, 7:52 pm


7. Del amor y otros demonios by Gabriel Garcia Marquez - finished 1/31/09

I admit this is a little bit of a letdown after the other two GGM's. His prose is as beautiful as ever and there are some very striking moments, but the story didn't really move or grab me to the extent I was expecting. It lacks the grand sweep and mythic feel of One Hundred Years of Solitude or the sort of detective-like focus of Cronica de una muerte anunciada.

52CarlosMcRey
Jan 31, 2009, 7:43 pm

Book Started: Song of Kali
Category: Thugs 'n Templars

I'd say there's some outsourcing joke in order, but I can't think of any right now. Anyway, bye bye, Illuminati. It's all TnT from here on out.

Song of Kali is not, strictly speaking, about Thuggee, so I was on the fence about whether to include it. It was actually Rushby's Children of Kali that put it over the top, since both books tread some similar ground: covering criminality in modern India, the question of how religion ties in, and one Westerner's travels and impressions in that world. This is also a reread, but I figured it would benefit from reading with Rushby's book.

53cmbohn
Jan 31, 2009, 10:38 pm

OK, so this has nothing to do with the actual books reviewed, I just wanted to say how cool it is find someone else who used to play INWO!

54CarlosMcRey
Fev 1, 2009, 8:40 pm

IIRC, one of my friends had bought the complete set. Ah, the days of dorm rooms and lazy card games!

55CarlosMcRey
Fev 2, 2009, 2:31 am

Book Started: Memoria del fuego: Los nacimientos
Category: Orientales y otros Americanos
Nationality: Uruguayo

Galeano has compiled something akin to the People's History of North and South America. The first volume starts out with pre-Columbian creation myths from all over the two continents. That's as far as I've gotten so far, but it's been pretty interesting.

56CarlosMcRey
Fev 3, 2009, 12:46 am


8. Song of Kali by Dan Simmons - finished 2/2/09

The bad guys in this book are technically not Thugs but Kapalikas, though the distinction is largely semantic. There are actually a few mentions of thugees, but from context it appears to just refer to more conventional criminals. (Although they are once curiously refered to as Asian thugees--wouldn't want to get them mixed up with all those Belgian thugees, I guess.)

In the novel, the poet Robert Luczak takes his wife and newborn child to Calcutta to do some research on a mysterious poem that's come out of that city only to find himself mixed up with some rather strange individuals.

Really, truly the grimmest of the Thuggee books so far, though since it is a horror novel, that's not entirely unwarranted. Interesting contrast with Children of Kali. Kevin Rushby goes to India in search of murderers and finds the poignant complexity of an ancient civilization struggling with its past, while Robert Luczack goes to India in search of an epic poem and finds, well, murderers.

At the risk of being called a PC thug (because that's the kind of insult that never stops hurting) I did find the novel somewhat racist. As I said, it is a horror novel, but was it really necessary to portray every Indian character as obnoxious, treacherous or both? Maybe it's just the contrast with Rushby, who paints a much richer portrait of India. I actually Simmons' portrayal would bother me a little less, if he didn't seem to go the extra mile to denigrate Indians as backwards and brutal.

(In one particular scene, an Indian intellectual browbeats Lucazk until he admits his Western view of India may be tinted by racism, but then Luczak's Indian-born wife basically replies, "No, Indian culture is just all kinds of messed up." It does segue into an interesting Lovecraftian bit, but still strikes me as a less than subtle argument for Western cultural superiority.)

The Kapalikas themselves were/are a group practicing some more outre aspects of Tantra. They apparently do show up as bogeymen in some traditional Indian dramas, but accurate information is in short supply and there's no indication that they ever made up any sort of criminal fraternity. (Interestingly, neither Confessions of a Thug or The Deceivers conflate left-hand tantric practices and criminality, though the connection does show up in Arkon Daraul.)

57CarlosMcRey
Fev 4, 2009, 2:29 am

Books Started: Seven Gothic Tales
Category: Queer Horror - Goths & Weirdos

I picked this up on a whim while collecting works for last year's Gothic Classics category, though it didn't really fit in, since most of those were pre-1850s. Just read the first tale so far, which was sort of intriguing--not gothic in a classic sense, but definitely had a dark ending.

58CarlosMcRey
Fev 9, 2009, 12:36 pm

Books Started: Black Magic: 13 Chilling Tales
Category: Obscure Works
Shared With: 6

This seems to be my month for starting books faster than I finish them. Los Nacimientos is good, but the way its written makes it perfet for only reading a few pages at a time. And while I'm enjoying Seven Gothic Tales, I find it does require a good amount of concentration to read. So, I've decided to start Black Magic as my fluff reading for when I just want a brief bit of amusement.

So far, the only story I've read is Algernon Blackwood's "Ancient Sorceries." Blackwood has a definite talent for atmosphere, put to good use in this story of an Englishman staying in a French village that holds some strange secrets. The ending was either nicely ambiguous or a little too conventional--I haven't really figured out which yet.

59CarlosMcRey
Editado: Maio 2, 2009, 7:56 pm


9. Seven Gothic Tales by Isak Dinesen - finished 2/11/09

I wasn't really sure what to expect when I started the book. The back cover compares Dinesen/Blixen to Henry James, and I must admit I have yet to read The Turn of the Screw or any similar works. The gothic aspect was definitely more subtle than I expected, but it's definitely there in these sometimes spooky, often sad (though not without moments of wit), tales of doomed love and lives gone astray.

Dinesen certainly has a talent for storytelling, which is featured in the frequent stories within stories. The best use is probably in "The Dreamers" which has an Englishman in the company of two Arabs on a boat tell the story of his ruination, which then becomes several stories which coincide strangely.

Anyway, a good collection of stories that I feel will merit a re-read sometime in the future. (I'm already wondering about a Re-read category for the next challenge...)

60cmbohn
Fev 12, 2009, 12:36 am

I'm finding that my reread stack is getting taller and taller, as I read what everyone else is posting! I keep saying, "oh, yeah. I loved that book. I ought to read it again."

61CarlosMcRey
Fev 13, 2009, 3:41 am

Yeah, right now, the only re-reads I'm doing are as part of a theme. (Such as some of the Thuggee ones.) I may be doing more "just for fun" re-reads at the end of the year.

I also learned last year, with the horror story collection Waking Nightmares, that some works are even better the second time around.

62CarlosMcRey
Editado: Maio 2, 2009, 7:58 pm


10. Black Magic edited by Don Ward - finished 2/14/09

I probably should have talked a little more about this book when I first started reading it. I had picked it up for a buck in a Madison, WI used bookstore, partially for the cover art and partially for the intriguing collection of authors. (It includes stories from Avram Davidson, Ray Bradbury, Lord Dunsany, as well as others.) Also, the premise piqued my interest. Here is the description on the back:

Thirteen master storytellers here conjure up a cauldron full of tales about the terrifying world of the Unknown, of voodoo, demon worship and witchcraft.

As with most anthologies, there was a certain amount of variety (or inconsistency) to the stories but also the opportunity to read authors I'd never heard of or wouldn't have read otherwise.

I don't really know much about H. R. Wakefield, but I'd previously heard of "He Cometh and He Passeth By!" in regards to its use of an Aleister Crowley stand-in as its bad guy. It's a pretty decent story of sorcery and revenge, and its baddy Oscar Clinton makes for an interesting facsimile of Crowley. (The name is, of course, amusing through no fault of Wakefield's.)

Also of note is Margaret Iriwn's "The Book," which spices up the cursed book theme through the interesting way the plot develops. The first sign of the curse taking effect, is the victim's insight into the morbidity and misanthropy of the authors of other (unrelated) books he tries to read.

Davidson's "Where do you live, Queen Esther?" is one of his neat little gems, and only the second time I've heard of "duppies." (Spotted previously in The Jaguar Hunter.) Algernon Blackwood's "Ancient Sorceries" is a good example of his talent at crafting an atmosphere of the weird, though I found the resolution a little disappointing.

Overall, a pretty good collection of weird tales.

63CarlosMcRey
Editado: Fev 15, 2009, 3:01 pm

Book Started: Astor Piazzolla: A Memoir
Category: Obscure Works
Shared With: 2

Piazzolla is the most important tango composer of the last fifty years, responsible for creating the more modern form of tango called Nuevo Tango. I am a big fan of his music. (If you've never heard of him, I recommend a listen. YouTube! is a good place to start.)

I'd read Le Grand Tango: The Life and Music of Astor Piazzolla a couple of years ago and while informative, I felt like the question of who Piazzolla was got buried under countless details of musical lineups, tour information, travel, etc. I had asked my brother-in-law, who's a tango scholar, if there were any works which might have a different emphasis, and he recommended this one.

I had filed that away for when I was in a better position to buy books, but it turned out to be unnecessary, since my sister ended up getting it for me for my birthday. And since it seems very few people own copies of this book, it now becomes part of my Obscure Works category.

64CarlosMcRey
Fev 20, 2009, 3:15 am


11. Astor Piazzolla: A Memoir by Natalio Gorin - finished 2/18/09

Really enjoyable look at Piazzolla, his music, and his life. The book is based on interviews with Piazzolla, and Gorin appears to have had enough of Piazzolla's trust to get a lot of revelatory disclosures out of him. (Piazzolla was apparently the sort of interviewee who loved to make outrageous, if ingenuous, statements when interviewed.) Also provides some interesting insights into how Piazzolla sees himself fitting into the larger culture.

65CarlosMcRey
Editado: Fev 20, 2009, 3:37 am

Book Started: El Pozo - Los Adioses
Category: Orientales y Otros Americanos
Nationality: Uruguayo

This book is made up of two very short works. I'm not sure if they count as short stories or novellas, but no matter. I've already zipped through the first of the stories, El Pozo.

Porque un hombre debe escribir la historia de su vida al llegar a los cuarenta años, sobre todo si le sucedieron cosas interesantes.

Or roughly translated: A man should write the story of his life when he reaches forty years of age, particularly if interesting things have happened to him.

It's an interesting existential exploration of the narrator's life, in particular two conversations--one with a poet, the other with a prostitute--which have had an effect on him.

I can't say there's any particularly interesting reason I sought out this work, more of a general interest in Latin American, particularly rioplatense, authors and his name coming up as a noteworthy author in that category.

66CarlosMcRey
Fev 20, 2009, 10:19 pm

Book Started: The Joy of Work: Dilbert's Guide to Finding Happiness at the Expense of Your Co-Workers
Category: Lighter Fare

Between the existentialism of Onetti and the colonial-era atrocities of Galeano, I figured I could use something funny as a bit of a relief. Adams' sense of humor tends towards the silly, but I like his books, and they actually sometimes have a good bit or two of advice. Sadly, this book was written at a time when the economy was doing really well, so its allusions to full employment and desparate employers are out of date.

67fannyprice
Fev 21, 2009, 9:11 am

>66 CarlosMcRey:, Carlos, I heard an interview with Scott Adams on National Public Radio & it appears Dilbert is now unemployed?!?! I don't follow the current comics because I don't get a paper newspaper and I will never remember to check them online, but I might have to start making an effort because I just can't imagine Dilbert NOT in a cubicle. (Catbert is my favorite...)

68CarlosMcRey
Fev 23, 2009, 1:27 am

He was unemployed for a little while, but he's back at work. Actually, he ended up working in several other departments, such as telemarketing and accounting for a while.

69CarlosMcRey
Editado: Fev 23, 2009, 1:44 pm


12. The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon - finished 2/22/09

A murder mystery set in an alternate timeline where European Jewish refugees from WWII were settled in a semi-autonamous corner of Alaska. I really enjoyed this novel. From Chabon's use of Hebrew-derived slang to the description of the world and its strata, the district of Sitka feels very much like a potentially real place. The plot is mostly pretty solid, though I must admit the big conspiracy took the novel a little out of plausibility territory for me.

70CarlosMcRey
Editado: Maio 2, 2009, 11:20 pm


13. El Pozo - Los Adioses by Juan Carlos Onetti - finished 2/22/09

At the risk of edging into pompousness, I'd have to say I consider myself a pretty good reader. I feel pretty confident when I read a work of fiction that I can pick up on subtleties, recognize subtext, grasp the use of symbols or themes, etc. It may be a little skewed, since I'm partially an autodidact when it comes to literature, having had my last ibut I figure all around I'm no slouch.

Which doesn't really apply when it comes to Spanish, since it's a language I'm sadly not as strong in. I generally have a good grasp of the vocabulary, but I sometimes feel like there's a lot I miss, especially the more subtle stuff.

Case in point: The two stories in this book struck me as quite well written, with much going on that is not described but can be inferred. But I don't think I really grasped anything and so feel a little uncertain how to describe the experience.

El Pozo (meaning "well" or "pit") is the reminisces of a man who has turned forty, who is an alienated type. He recounts when he was young and assaulted a young woman. He also describes his attempts to open up to two people, one a poet, the other a prostitute, and the way they respond to him.

Los Adioses (Goodbyes) is told from the point of view of a shopowner in a small Latin American town where people go for medical treatment and convalesence--he's the proprietor of the only general store/bar in town. But the story is not really about him, but about the ex-basketball player who shows up in town to receive treatment. Much of the story is second-hand, learned of by the narrator only through gossip in the town.

Onetti's writing struck me as quite powerful and evocative, his stories intriguing studies of character. I may have to revisit these stories, to see if I can pick up on more than I did the first time around.

71CarlosMcRey
Fev 23, 2009, 10:12 pm


14. The Joy of Work by Scott Adams - finished 2/23/09

Sort of a series with The Dilbert Principle and The Dilbert Future. Scott Adams is funny as always, and in this volume he has some very humorous suggestions for how to get as much enjoyment out of work as possible. As always, there's some pretty absurd suggestions as well as some that verge on plausibility.

72CarlosMcRey
Fev 24, 2009, 1:14 am

Book Started: Something Wicked This Way Comes
Category: Audiobooks

I was quite excited in 10th grade when we read Macbeth and I got to find out where the name of the movie/book comes from. As one of the witches says when she's expecting Macbeth's arrival:

By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.


Ironically, I had not read the book or seen the movie at that point. When I was young I had seen ads/previews for the movie, as it was going to be played on some cable channel we had. I don't remember many specifics of the ad (I think it had Jason Robards) but the title and the atmosphere of dark fantasy have stuck with me.

And though this is my first time reading this novel, it is not my first Ray Bradbury. My experience with the author dates back to when we read Farenheit 451 in 8th grade. I had actually flaked out about getting the book (or getting my parents to buy it) but somehow I managed to fake it long enough to avoid getting in trouble.

Shortly after I got the book, the entire class, including the teacher, had decided they hated the book and it was dropped completely as a class read. By that point, though, I had read the first chapter and gotten totally hooked. Just reading the first few pages, with its vivid metaphoric description of a guy taking a flamethrower to a house, fired up both my young teenage boy fondness for violent spectacle and some other part of my brained which thrilled in the beauty of the language. I ripped through that thing, thinking it was too bad the rest of the class hadn't appreciated it.

So, I've finally gotten around to Something Wicked This Way Comes and its aura of dark fantasy. I've gotten through the first disk of the audiobook so far. His language is quite striking, though it doesn't have quite the same impact as it did those many years ago.

73CarlosMcRey
Editado: Maio 2, 2009, 11:22 pm


15. Memoria del fuego: Los nacimientos by Eduardo Galeano - finished 2/25/09

Starting with folklore and mythology and then with historical events, Galeano presents the history of the New World as a series of vignettes or anecdotes. It's a surprisingly powerful approach, one that I found really highlighted some of the characters and struggles of the period. This book, the first of a trilogy, begins with pre-Columbian America and concludes in 1700.

74CarlosMcRey
Fev 28, 2009, 2:55 pm

Book Started El gaucho Martin Fierro
Category: Gauchos y Porteños

This book is actually made up two works: El gaucho Martin Fierro and its sequel, La vuelta de Martin Fierro. It's a foundational work of Argentine literature. Both works are written as epic poems detailing the life and struggles of Martin Fierro, who rebels against oppression. The book I'm reading is a bilingual version I checked out of the library, as the Spanish can be tricky at times. It's also heavily footnoted, which is nice.

75CarlosMcRey
Editado: Maio 2, 2009, 11:23 pm

(Not actually my cover, but pretty cool, eh?)
16. El gaucho Martin Fierro by José Hernández - finished 3/5/09

As I mentioned above, the book is made up of two epic poems about Martin Fierro. In the first one, Martin Fierro gets pressed into military service on the frontier, where he's underfed, underpaid, and generally maltreated. He escapes and returns to his home only to find that his wife has died and his kids has scattered. He continues his nomadic, outlaw existence until one day attacked by a press gang looking to send him back to the frontier. The ferocity and courage with which he fights inspires one of the press gang, a Sergeant Cruz, to join his side. Together they head to the frontier to live outside the reach of the law.

The second part, "The return of Martin Fierro" has Martin Fierro come back and find his now adult sons, who tell of some of the troubles they have had with the corrupt authorities. Then he has a payada (a sort of musical contest) that ties back into the first story.

The Spanish is influenced by the rural language of Argentina, featuring dialect and the wordplay particular to that region. (A style of punning insult that doesn't translate well is used several times.) I was worried the language would be impenitrable and/or dull, but I found it very readable and enjoyable. Both the footnotes and the translation helped in this regard.

There were several interesting aspects to the novel. I rather liked the outlaw mystique aspect. Something about the musician-fighter-outlaw type portrayed seems pretty universal, as if with some tweaks he could be a gangsta rapper or a buddy of Waylon Jennings.

There's also a strong feel of social realism that raises political issues. It is depressing to read about the way corrupt officials abused their power and made life worse for people who already had a hard lot in life. It's even worse to think about the extent to which abuse of power was to reach 100 years later in Argentina.

76CarlosMcRey
Editado: Maio 2, 2009, 11:26 pm


17. Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury - finished 3/5/09

Ironic that I mentioned the Macbeth connection up there, because Bradbury's style reminded me a bit of Faulkner, whose The Sound and the Fury derives its title from the same play.

Something Wicked is praised in King's Danse Macabre, and I couldn't help think of the extent to which it has influenced some of King's fiction. Certainly the theme of an ancient evil facing off against some plucky residents of a small town is not uncommon in his work.

Said evil here is the Cougar and Dark Pandemonium Carnival, which shows up out of season and seems to offer just a little bit more than the usual sideshow diversions. Caught up in its magic are two boys, Will and Jim, who live next to each other and are best friends.

As I said, I have a fondness for Bradbury's style, whatever its Faulknerian or Lovecraftian excesses. Sometimes I did feel like he got so caught up in an overheated description that it became unclear exactly what was going on. Still, the evocative language worked pretty well overall. I was a bit surprised by how much of a kid's book it turned out to be. That's not meant as a criticism of it, but I do suspect I would have found some elements more powerful if I had read it when I was much younger.

77CarlosMcRey
Mar 7, 2009, 2:15 am

Book Started: Facundo: Or, Civilization and Barbarism
Category: Gauchos y Porteños

A biography of the General Facundo Quiroga, who was a caudillo in 19th Century Argentina. (Who I think I may have some relation to, but I'll have to check with my relatives.) He served under Juan Manuel Rosas, who would come to be the first dictator of Argentina after a civil war. The civil war was fought over whether power should be concentrated in the federal capital of Buenos Aires or should be decentralized. Facundo started life as a gaucho before becoming involved with Rosas and the civil war.

Book Started: Suite Francaise
Category: Audiobooks

Irene Nemirovsky's uncompleted novel of a French family during WWII. I've already read a couple of her other works (Fire in the Blood, The Courilof Affair) which were quite good. She's got an interesting eye for the social struggles of upper middle class and exiles. The family in the novel appears to be of the former, and news of WWII has begun to arrive in Paris at the beggining of the novel.

78cmbohn
Mar 7, 2009, 4:56 pm

El gaucho Martin Fierro sounds good. It is available in English? My Spanish, which was never great, is now lapsed into the menu/tourist variety.

79CarlosMcRey
Mar 7, 2009, 7:21 pm

I know it's been translated. The copy I read, which I borrowed from the library, was bilingual, which was pretty handy. I checked on worldcat and amazon, and it looks like that version isn't too difficult to get ahold of.

80CarlosMcRey
Mar 8, 2009, 1:53 pm

Book Started: La Guerra Gaucha
Category: Gauchos y Porteños

The book tells about the role that gauchos played in Argentina during the war against Spain. It's told as a series of short stories, so I thought it would go well with Facundo as a way of breaking up my reading a little bit. I've actually found the first story so far a little hard to follow, in part because of vocabulary. I'll probably be reading the rest of the collection with a Spanish-English dictionary in hand.

(Oddly enough, the touchstone seems to come up fine during editing but doesn't show up in the finished message.)

81CarlosMcRey
Editado: Maio 2, 2009, 11:27 pm


18. Facundo: Or, Civilization and Barbarism by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento - finished 3/11/09

I found Facundo: Or, Civilization and Barbarism to be quite an interesting work, though I have to admit I'm a bit unsure as to whether I can call it a great book. It is in some ways a rather odd duck: part biography of Facundo Quiroga, part history, part polemic, part sociology, sometimes novelistic. The main section of the book details the life of Facundo Quiroga, who began his career as a gaucho and would go on to become an important part of the federalista movement that brought Rosas to power.

The portrayal of Quiroga is certainly striking. Quiroga killed a cougar as a young man, thus earning the nickname The Cougar of the Plains, by which he would be known his whole life. His impulsiveness and bad temper caused him to give up schooling at an early age and led to his attempt to join the War of Independence to end with being thrown in prison.

After independence, he raised an army of gauchos and fought against the unitarios, who believed power should be centralized in Buenos Aires. Though he fought under the banner Religion or Death, Sarmiento describes him as a man who did not believe in any sort of religion and had no qualms about killing priests. Quiroga could at times be a terrible general; the only military units he knew how to use were irregular gaucho cavalry (called montoneros). He did, however, manage to succeed in some critical battles which insured the rise to power of Rosas.

Quiroga appears to have been uninterested in governing but did take on some government positions. It was on a government taks that he was later assassinated in a pretty brutal ambush. It's unclear if Rosas was behind the assassination.

That is only part of the book, since Sarmiento casts Quiroga as embodying the sort of barbarism which is the way of life in the provinces and which has led to the brutality of the Rosas government. He also presents an interesting portrait of Argentina at the beginning of the 19th century. Quiroga makes for an interestin guide, though not without his flaws. For one, his casting of the debate in terms of civilization vs. barbary strikes me as simplistic and leads to a certain idealization of European culture and politics. And there's a certain loose quality to the narrative, with Sarmiento digressing to editioralize or tell a story about Quiroga. It's not unpleasant, though he isn't above his moments of overheated prose, but I did find it hard to follow. Sarmiento is also obviously not an objective historian, so his account is one-sided.

The book provided some interesting insights into Argentina. For example, one stereotype of Argentines (especially those of Buenos Aires) is that they like to pretend that they're European. I always thought that was just a comment on the snobbery and racism of Argentines, but Buenos Aires did see a substantial amount of immigration beginning in the 19th century. Along with that came an influx of Enlightenment thought, so that while the political thinking of much of the rest of the continent was still basically Spanish, the elites of Buenos Aires were looking to the politics of England, France and the United States for inspiration. (And I don't think I'm breaking any taboos by claiming the politics of Spain was relatively backwards in the 19th century.)

One final note: Quiroga reminded me a bit of Che Guevara, another brave though not always brilliant military leader who was more interested in fighting than governing.

82CarlosMcRey
Editado: Mar 13, 2009, 3:07 am

Book Started: Don Segundo Sombra
Category: Gauchos y Porteños

The last of my gaucho reads. I don't know much about the novel, except that it's a bildungsroman about a boy growing up in the provinces. Here, he gets to know an old gaucho, who proves influential in his maturation. I believe that to some extent it completes the shift in the cultural meaning of the gaucho which began with La guerra gaucha (which I'm still reading) and El payador, both by Leopoldo Lugones.

83CarlosMcRey
Mar 17, 2009, 8:44 pm


19. Don Segundo Sombra by Ricardo Güiraldes - finished 3/16/09

Coming of age story about an orphan growing up in a rural town. At the start of the novel, he's a teenager who's living something of a fruitless existence, hanging out at the local watering hole with other nether-do-well friends. He meets the gaucho don Segundo Sombra one day and is so impressed with him, that he becomes a farmhand where the gaucho is working and goes on the follow him on his various journeys. Don Segundo Sombra goes on to become his mentor and teach him much about life.

This is a pretty sweet story, with the gaucho Sombra acting as the surrogate father that the narrator never had. There are some of the same guacho elements as in Martin Fierro, though softened to some extent. There is only one lethal knife fight in this book, in which Sombra does not participate. The gaucho's wandering lifestyle is a little more romanticized, reflecting the gaucho's love of freedom more than his marginal social standing.

I've never seen the movie Shane, but I once read a sociology book about Westerns, and I think Sombra plays a similar role to Shane: he's a civilizing figure, but not one that is able to exist within civilization. Having saved the town or raised the orphan to maturity, he must move on and continue his wandering ways.

The book comes with a small section of commentary, which I have not delved into, mostly because I worry it'd influence my review too much. However, the brief biography does note that at the time the book was written (1920s), the gaucho was rapidly becoming obsolete. A global demand for Argentine beef had brought in lots of money, and the old ways of cattle raising were making way for mechanization. Thus, the book seeks to capture a vital part of the national culture just as it's beginning to disappear.

84CarlosMcRey
Mar 17, 2009, 9:23 pm

Book Started: El juguete rabioso
Category: Gauchos y Porteños

Though I'm still working on La guerra gaucha, this is the moment where this category starts to leave the gaucho behind for the big city life of Buenos Aires and its bigger-than-life selection of fictional characters. There's a bit of a nice segue here, since Ricardo Güiraldes was one of the first supporters of Roberto Arlt, author of The Mad Toy.

I have to admit, I always wonder why Arlt isn't better known outside of the Spanish-speaking world. Even given that I may be a little overenthusiastic due to my late-in-life discovery of Argentine literature (Hello, Leopoldo Lugones!), I find Arlt's fiction pretty potent stuff, with its mix of modern alienation, gritty realism, and wicked imagination. (The Seven Madmen's plot which in part involves a character named "The Astrologer" planning to overthrow the government by building chemical weapons factories would be pretty outrageous, except that it seems almost downright prophetic.)

85CarlosMcRey
Editado: Maio 2, 2009, 11:30 pm


20. El juguete rabioso by Roberto Arlt - finished 3/18/09

I really zipped through this one, since it's pretty short and pretty engrossing. Due to a lack of time, I'm just going to post this brief item for right now and fill it in later. (Here it is...)

The Mad Toy is the first person tale of Silvio Astier, the teenage son of immigrants, and his attempts to find some measure of success in Buenos Aires. The novel is somewhat episodic and divided into four distinct sections. In the first, Silvio and his friends decide to engage in some robbery, beggining by breaking into a library. They soon give it up, because they decide the risk of being caught is too great. In the second, Silvio finds a job with a rather pompous bookseller. The bookseller turns out to be a less than honest merchant. In the third, Silvio gets a job as a mechanic for the air force, by impressing a sergeant with his technical knowledge. But he loses the job and becomes suicidal. In the last section, Silvio gets a pretty crummy job as a paper salesman until a friend offers him an opportunity to score a lot of cash fast.

The novel has Arlt's usual energy, eccentric characters, and his feel for the street life of Buenos Aires, but I wouldn't call this my favorite of his novels. It's more intimate than The Seven Madmen/The Flamethrowers, which is considered his opus, but feels too tame by comparison. Overall, I would recommend this novel, especially as an introduction to the author. But it doesn't quite reach the level that some of his other works, including his short fiction, do.

86CarlosMcRey
Mar 19, 2009, 10:08 pm

Book Started: La continuación y otras páginas
Category: Obscure Works
Shared With: 0

This is an anthology of short stories and poetry by Silvina Ocampo, who was one of Borges' friends (and married to Adolfo Bioy Casares) and a fairly productive author in her own right. The back cover text states that her fiction often dwelt on modes of the real, including the fantastic and strange, the ambiguity of the autobiographical, and humor.

Book Started: Toda Mafalda
Category: Lighter Fare

An Argentine comic strip that ran from 1964 to 1973, which I always describe as a sort of cross between Peanuts and Doonesbury. (The lead character sometimes experiences melancholy...about the terrible things happening in the world.) My parents owned all of the paperback collections, and I used to read and re-read them as a kid. This volume collects all of the existing strips Quino drew and wrote, including some that were never published.

87eairo
Editado: Mar 27, 2009, 10:16 am

#73: You're so right about the power of the form in Memoria del fuego. It is economical, yet all that is needed is there, and he writes well enough. This trilogy once (more) convinced that history is not necessarily boring.

And the creation story given in the beginning is one the most beautiful I've read so far.

88CarlosMcRey
Editado: Maio 2, 2009, 11:33 pm


21. La guerra gaucha by Leopoldo Lugones - finished 3/27/09

This is my third collection of Lugones' stories. As with his other works, this one is pretty intriguing, though not without its flaws. Lugones apparently did a fair amount of research in the area where the Gaucho War took place, including recording the different oral traditions. This really shows in the way he chronicles the guacho life and gives a sense of the place. He's fond of scenic and meteorological descriptions, which are nicely evocative and poetic. (On a side note, I learned that one epithet of the time for Spaniards is "godos," meaning Goths.)

I think it short changes the historical details of the war a bit too much. It would have been intriguing to get a better sense of the hows and whys of the battles between the montoneros and the royalists. Some of the stories also felt like they trafficked too much in a rather simplistic nationalism. But overall, an intriguing portrait of a particularly unique time and place.

Incidentally, anyone interested in a more detailed, story-by-story review can check out my blog posts: http://azolotl.blogspot.com/search/label/La%20Guerra%20Gaucha

89CarlosMcRey
Mar 28, 2009, 8:38 pm

Book Started: Plata Quemada
Category: Gauchos y Porteños

"Based on true events" as they say. The novel is based on a real heist that took place in Buenos Aires in 1965, and the action takes place over the course of the heist and its aftermath. (It was also made into a movie.) The interesting mix of lowlife characters makes me think of Tarantino or Guy Ritchie, though I think it's really an homage to Roberto Arlt. The novels nonfiction basis is reflected in its references to newspaper accounts, eyewitness testimony, police theories, and all the ambiguities in reconstructing an act of violence after the fact.

Having seen the movie based on the book, I already have some idea how the story turns out, but the book seems to be quite a bit more complex. I suspect I'll zip through this one, as it's pretty engrossing. The title is translated as Money to Burn, although I guess you could call it Burnt Silver to be painfully literal. The word "plata" as synonymous for money is an (Latin-)Americanism.

90CarlosMcRey
Editado: Maio 2, 2009, 11:34 pm


22. La continuación y otras páginas by Silvina Ocampo - finished 3/29/09

This is a short compilation of short stories and poems from various Ocampo books. The short stories reminded me a bit of Julio Cortazar though told in a less surrealistic manner. There's themes of identity and loss of, memory, childhood, the boundaries of reality. There's some odd, interesting concepts in here, including an author who confuses himself with one of his characters, a man able to experience the history of an antique, and a woman who stages her own reincarnation.

I have less to say about the poetry, because I'm not particularly good at reading poetry. I do enjoy it at times, such as with some of Poe's works, or if it tells a story, such as in Martin Fierro. Some of the same themes from the stories are echoed in the poetry, including memory and nostalgia.

91CarlosMcRey
Abr 1, 2009, 3:08 am


23. Toda Mafalda by Quino - finished 3/30/09

When I was growing up, my parents had roughly the whole collection of Mafalda books, though by that time they were a little worn and beat up and often out of order. I was really into Mafalda, a comic strip about a girl and her friends and family in late 1960s Buenos Aires, for reasons that I couldn't quite explain. This book Toda Mafalda, which collects every strip Quino ever wrote.

It was fun to revisit, and I was impressed with how funny and moving the strips remain. Even though it's a strip very much rooted in the lower middle-class life of Buenos Aires, circa 1970, the only thing about it that feels dated are the references. Quino is a pretty keen observer of the human condition and quite talented at representing it through picture and language.

92CarlosMcRey
Editado: Maio 2, 2009, 11:36 pm


24. Plata Quemada by Ricardo Piglia - finished 4/2/09

Forget what I said about "based on true events" above. Though novelistic in format and full of colorful characters and a cinematic shootout, the bulk of what happens in the novel is real. Piglia tells the story about an armored car heist in Buenos Aires in 1965 and its aftermath, most notably the shootout in Montevideo several days later. Piglia weaves a pretty gripping story, and where he breaks from the factual, such as getting inside the killer's heads, only adds to the depth.

93CarlosMcRey
Abr 3, 2009, 11:23 pm

Book Started: El Cantor de Tango
Category: Gauchos y Porteños

This is a novel about a graduate student writing a dissertation on Borges who heads to Buenos Aires to track down a famed tango singer named Julio Martel. Interestingly, though the action begins briefly in New York during the month of September in 2001, no mention of 9/11 is made. So far, I'm finding it pretty enjoyable though wondering about the references. (For example, the protagonist finds himself to a bookstore/tango studio named El Rufían Melancolico, which is the name of an Arlt character from Los Siete Locos. And what of the loose paving stones the singer's mother is walking on? Reference to "Baldosa Floja" or coincidence?)

Still pretty enjoyable so far, especially since Martinez appears to be making BsAs a character in the novel.

94cmbohn
Abr 4, 2009, 10:16 pm

I remember my Spanish teacher at the university using the Mafalda comics in the classroom. He had lived in Argentina.

95CarlosMcRey
Abr 7, 2009, 8:38 pm

Book Started: In Defense of Food
Category: Audiobooks

Although I'm still rockin' Suite Francaise in the car, I decided I needed an audiobook to get me through the tedium of job applications and income tax forms. So far, enjoying it, though I think I'm familiar with most of the arguments from one of Pollan's NY Times pieces. However, as with The Botany of Desire, I look forward to seeing him flesh out the material.

96CarlosMcRey
Abr 8, 2009, 12:57 am


25. El Cantor de Tango by Tomas Eloy Martinez - finished 4/7/09

OK, to start off what, one thing I really loved about this novel was its "love letter to Buenos Aires" quality. While reading the novel, I often found myself compelled to pull up Google Earth to seek out the specific corners where the action was taking place. Also, kudos are due to Martinez' successful incorporation of real-life events, such as the 2001 banking/economic/political crisis, into the story and for his clever use of stories within the stories.

But to add a little substance to the praise, the book is about a graduate student named Bruno who is working on a dissertation regarding Borges' fondness for the early tangos of the 20th century. He hears about a tango singer named Julio Martel who sings like Carlos Gardel and incorporates those older tangos into his repertoire. He flies to Buenos Aires to listen to this singer, but by that time the singer has stopped performing at scheduled concerts and only performs sporadically in seemingly random locations. Bruno ends up in pursuit of Martel, trying to second-guess where he will sing next, and comes to discover something akin to a secret history of Buenos Aires.

That's only scratching the surface, but it's a great read. My only complaint would have to be that the story was a little too Borgesian, to the point where I found it sometimes distracting. I almost wonder if I would have enjoyed it more if I had caught fewer references. Still, the story really hooked me and ended strong, the kind of book that leaves me feeling mildly intoxicated.

Of course, it might help to have an emotional connection to tango music. My fascination with tango pretty much begins with Astor Piazzolla. I don't remember the first time I was moved by his music; if anything my memory calls up a gradual, almost piecemeal process, of slowly coming to realize that the music struck me as endlessly nostalgic and yet absolutely timeless, as of a longing for things that have always been lost. Piazzolla doesn't figure at all in Martinez' work, which deals with much older, more traditional tangos. (And some tango buffs allegedly still won't recognize Piazzolla's music as tango, though probably less so.)

97CarlosMcRey
Abr 9, 2009, 1:58 am

Book Started: Cola de lagartija
Category: Gauchos y Porteños

I was interested in the novel because I had read that Valenzuela based it on Jose Lopez Rega, who was sort of a Rasputin figure to Juan Peron and Isabela Peron. (He was nicknamed El Brujo.) So far, it seems to be pretty crazy. It seems to switch from stream of consciousness from within the wacked out mind of Rega to some dialogue between to men (police officers, military?) trying to catch him. (The action appears to take place after the fall of Isabela's govt.)

98CarlosMcRey
Abr 15, 2009, 12:22 am


26. Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky - finished 4/13/09

Nemirovsky's unfinished novel about France during World War II. Very striking, with her usual talent for describing the human condition and how it applies to war. I thought it was quite good, though there were times during the first section I felt sort of lost and felt the second section was even better, more heartbreaking. It is a shame that the story stops just when it appears to be taking a new and interesting turn.

I'll try to write up a proper review later, though I have to admit it appears there are already quite a few very good ones up on LT. What I couldn't quite let go of while listening to this is the fact that Nemirovsky was kept from finishing it by the very thing she was writing about, and her looming fate never seems to come into view. Her German characters are so human, but the reality of the Final Solution, the machine that would swallow up Nemirovsky like million others, seems like something from another universe. It's almost impossible to imagine its presence near this French town, with its traditions and petty squabbles, and those soldiers trying so hard not to be too obnoxious about their occupation.

Incidentally, this would make the second author I've read this year whose life and works were cut off by Nazi invasion and the Holocaust, with Bruno Schulz being the first. (Sadly his unfinished novel, The Messiah, is completely lost, no trace of it having ever turned up.)

99CarlosMcRey
Abr 21, 2009, 9:39 pm


27. Cola de lagartija by Luisa Valenzuela - finished 4/20/09

The novel centers around the real-life figure of Jose Lopez Rega. He was an advisor to Juan and Isabela Peron, having met the latter through occultist circles. As founder of the Argentine Anti-Communist Alliance ("Triple-A" and Minister of Social Welfare, he had a role in starting up the Dirty War, which would then be intensified following the military coup that would end Isabela's presidency. He was known as "El Brujo" for his involvement in occultism and the Rasputin-like hold he held over the Perons.

The central character of Cola de lagartija is known as El Brujo, and he was part of the Peron government until the coup that brought him from power. But the Brujo of this narrative is something much stranger than his real-life counterpart. He starts the novel in exile in a jungle region of Argentina, Corrientes, surrounded by hangers-on and plotting strange occultist projects.

Even in exile, he has many enemies, including the military government, an author attempting to write his biography, and a revolutionary who seeks to bring the Brujo down. Rega's response is to take over the local town of Capivari and organize the fulfillment of a prophecy in which a river of blood will flow.

From what little I knew of the novel, I imagined it a magical realist portrayal of Rega, one in which his occultism would have some expression in real life effects. But, the novel goes beyond even the sort of apocalyptic possibilities of A Hundred Years of Solitude into a nightmare realm of occultism, twisted sexuality, and political violence. Often surreal and disturbing, sometimes funny, it makes for a mesmerizing and wholly fictional portrayal of an individual whose actions helped lead a country down a very dark road.

100deebee1
Abr 22, 2009, 4:16 am

the latest book sounds intriguing, one among many in your highly interesting list of reads. would you know if it has been translated into English?

101CarlosMcRey
Abr 22, 2009, 9:00 pm

This one has been translated as The Lizard's Tail. Judging from Valenzuela's author page, it appears several of her works have been translated.

102CarlosMcRey
Abr 22, 2009, 10:28 pm

Book Started: Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal
Category: Lighter Fare

I'd already heard many good things about Christopher Moore on LT before encountering Lamb on sale at one of my local bookstores. The title pretty much says it all. Really funny, sort of addictive so far--the kind of book I can't decide whether to just rip through or ration out. (Heck, I'll just rip through it.)

103CarlosMcRey
Abr 23, 2009, 2:17 am


28. In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan - finished 4/22/09

Here's a book to make you think twice about buying frozen meals. It's not so much the horror stories (this isn't The Jungle) as the greater sense of the extent to which the modern western diet contributes to dreaded diseases, like cancer, diabetes and heart disease. I have to admit that a lot of it struck me as old news, in part because these are topics that Pollan has already covered in his articles for the NYT Magazine. Still, I'm a big fan of Pollan's writing on food and health, and it never hurst to have a few more compelling reasons to keep an eye on one's diet.

104CarlosMcRey
Abr 24, 2009, 2:45 am

Book Started: Duma Key
Category: Audiobooks

I've heard many good things about the novel, so I took the opportunity to check it out from the library. This will be my fifith King book (but one of those was the nonfiction Danse Macabre), and though I've yet to fall in love with his stuff, I have developed a degree of respect towards his work. I'm hoping the book lives up to its reputation. So far, it does seem a little flat stylistically, though that may reflect the mental condition of the narrator, who suffered brain damage in a car accident.

105CarlosMcRey
Abr 25, 2009, 9:10 pm


29. Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore - finished 4/23/09

In 10th grade, I had a friend who wrote a story about a guy who knew Jesus when he was a kid. Somehow he manages to get Jesus killed while still young, but people get them confused enough that they start assuming he's the Messiah. (If it weren't for the obvious stealing from Monty Python's Life of Bryan, there might be something almost Borgesian about that kind of mistaken identity.) I'm not sure what the point of the reminiscence is, except to think about the degree of gaps left in the Gospels and how much they leave open for retconning. Also, about the appeal of blasphemy to smart-alecky high-schoolers.

Lamb isn't really blasphemous, or at least it has no interest in either blasphemy or heresy. Then again, anyone looking to make that kind of claim would have ample opportunity, since the Jesus of the novel is as obviously human as that of The Last Temptation of Christ. (Also, apparently Christianity is a synchretization of Judaism, Buddhism, Taoism, and yoga.) Then again, by having the novel told by Jesus' (who is called Joshua, which is a more direct translation of Yeshua) best friend, who happens to be a smart-alecky Jewish guy, we never have to directly face Jesus' struggle over giving up worldly ways.

Anyway, before I get too deep into the rambling (and because I'm tired), it was a very funny book for the first three quarters or so. Since there's large gaps in the early part of Jesus' life, Moore has a lot to work with through a good part of the novel. By the time we get to the end, though, there's a lot less wiggle room, hence less opportunity to insert humor. Moore generally avoids anything that might undermine or challenge the gospels, which takes much of the edge off the humor. Seriously, translating the basic message of Jesus into smart-alecky Jewish guy terms is good for a smile, but isn't all that funny. Still, I can't fault Moore for avoiding getting too sacrilegous.

And to close off on a tangent--man, Moore's Judas is pretty flat. Ever since reading/watching Temptation, I tend to picture Judas as a towering redhead who looks and sounds vaguely like Harvey Keitel. That is one apostle you wouldn't want to mess with!

106CarlosMcRey
Abr 26, 2009, 4:40 pm

Book Started: El Tunel
Category: Gauchos y Porteños

I don't really know much about Ernesto Sabato, except that he was a contemporary of Borges and Cortazar. This novel is about a painter who's killed a woman who was the only one who understood his work. A little slow so far.

107CarlosMcRey
Abr 28, 2009, 12:39 am

Book Started: We Have Always Lived in the Castle
Category: Queer (NBSO) Horror

I've previously only read Shirley Jackson's short works, as collected in The Lottery: And Other Stories. In that collection, I was struck by the extent to which she could inflect daily life with an aura of menace, the suggestion of violence lurking underneath the surface of everyday existence. (A violence both literal and social, so the chance of physical harm is no less likely nor more deadly than that of social embarassement.)

One chapter into WHALITC and there's already a pretty disturbing undertone to the novel, which is narrated by "Merricat" Blackwood, who is one of the few remaining members of a once rich and noteworthy family.

108CarlosMcRey
Editado: Abr 29, 2009, 11:03 pm


30. El Tunel by Ernesto Sabato - finished 4/28/09

A pretty solid existentialist parable about an artist who murders the one person who understood him and his work. Overall pretty strong, though even at 143 pages it sometimes felt like it dragged a bit. And was the detective novel proposed by Hunter around page 99 meant as an homage to Borges' "Death and the Compass"?

The artist Juan Pablo Castel has painted a picture which features a seemingly inconsequential window through which can be seen a woman staring off into the distance. Nobody else seems to notice it except one mysterious woman. Castel becomes fixated on her and seeks her out, finally running into her seemingly by accident. They begin a sexual relation, but then Castel begins to suspect that she's sleeping with other people as well. He becomes increasingly obsessed and finally kills her.

I'm not sure what exactly it was that made this novel seem good but not really amazing. Was it that Castel's obsessiveness struck me as more irritating than infectious? (I generally have a soft spot for obsessives.) Is it that the metaphors seem a bit straightforward? (What would Borges or Cortazar have done with this story?)

I may have to come back to it at some point and give it another chance.

109CarlosMcRey
Editado: Abr 30, 2009, 1:23 am

Brief update on Duma Key:

A woman driving a yellow Hummer while holding a cell phone with one hand and a cigarette in the other hand? It's not just cliché, it's dated cliché. (Although in King's defense, he probably wrote that scene when gas was below $4/ gal and the Dow above 10,000.)

When looking at the house he rents, which is in a somewhat precarious state, the protagonist actually says, "The House of Usher." Does King think his readers are illiterates? Do any King protagonists respond to being shown a firearm in the first act by stating, "Oh, look, Chekov's gun!"?

So far, the protagonist's brain damage seems to be the most interesting thing about him. If he were brain dead, he might be a laugh riot.

I have to admit I was a bit excited to learn most of the action is taking place outside Sarasota, where I went to college. I thought King had flubbed it when he mentioned one of the characters being a student at FSU in Sarasota, but a quick search shows there are some FSU campuses in Sarasota. Of course, it means that the character in question is either a med student, a theater major or studying museum studies.

110CarlosMcRey
Abr 30, 2009, 1:22 am

(Creepy cover, eh?)
31. We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson - finished 4/29/09

Perhaps it's just not very fair to read Stephen King and Shirley Jackson around the same time. King has a certain talent for writing good fiction, but he's a relatively normal middle American with a taste for monster movies and EC comics. Shirley Jackson, on the other, hand--well, there were moments in WHALITC where I felt a bit like, What kind of person could write something like this? The back cover of my copy says something like, "If Shirley Jackson is ever tried for witchcraft, We Have Always Lived in the Castle will serve as exhibit A for the prosecution." It seemed campily overwrought when I first got the book, but now I'm not so sure.

WHALITC is the story of the Blackwood family, or at least what is left of it. They were once a rich and admired family in the town they lived in but are now reduced to three members: the sisters Constance and Merricat (Mary Katherine) and old uncle Julian. They are the survivors of a poisoning which killed the rest of the family, and suspicion has fallen on one of them to such an extent that people generally shun the house.

The story is told through the point of view of Merricat, who feels a particular antipathy towards the outside world. I think having Merricat as the window onto the story makes for a powerful, if sometimes uncomfortable, reading experience. She exhibits a strange mix of playfulness and sadisticness combined with a certain magical thinking. (There were times I wondered if her little charms really would work, even though they seemed silly more than anything else.) It's hard to know whether to loath her or sympathize with her.

I realized today that I tossed this up with the rest of the gothic fiction and weird fiction without ever really explaining why. And what does American Gothic even mean? (Besides, you know, that painting.) I have to admit I'm a bit fuzzy on this, but for now I'll just make the argument that WHALITC shares certain elements and themes with Nathaniel Hawthorne's House of the Seven Gables: the ancient house, the decayed family, the tension between the family and the outside world. (There's probably a good, accessible book on the Gothic tradition in American fiction I should seek out some day.)

111cmbohn
Abr 30, 2009, 11:07 am

Great review! I agree with you that Jackson is just a master at creating that sort of feeling of the regular world gone horribly wrong. One of my 5 star reads for this year. I find myself still thinking about it and about the fate of Merricat and Constance at the end of the book.

112CarlosMcRey
Maio 1, 2009, 1:57 am

cmbohn, totally agree about its five star status. I thought Jackson's short stories were pretty good, but I like the way she fills up a novel and the way the story moved through several surprises and revelations.

113CarlosMcRey
Maio 1, 2009, 2:07 am

Book Started: Laughter in the Dark
Category: Eastern European Authors

The first thing that struck me about this story was how the whole plotline gets sort of summed up and dismissed within the first couple of paragraphs. It's about a semi-wealthy (upper middle class) middle-aged married man who ruins his life by starting a relationship with a much younger woman. So far it's reminiscent of "Pandora's Box" starring Louise Brooks. Not always gripping but there are some great parts to it.

114ivyd
Maio 1, 2009, 1:18 pm

>111 cmbohn: We Have Always Lived in the Castle

One of my 5 star reads for this year. I find myself still thinking about it...

I read this book when I was in high school -- which was, um, 40+ years ago -- and I too find myself still thinking about it!

115CarlosMcRey
Editado: Maio 2, 2009, 11:54 pm


32. Laughter in the Dark by Vladimir Nabokov - finished 5/2/09

My first Nabokov. The story was reminiscent of "Pandora's Box" or "The Blue Angel" (yeah, Weimar Cinema college class!) in its theme of a timid but wealthy man who ruins his life by falling in love with a woman half his age. As Nabokov tells you right at the beginning:

Once upon a time there lived in Berlin, Germany, man called Albinus. He was rich, respectable, happy; one day he abandoned his wife for the sake of a youthful mistress; he loved; was not loved; and his life ended in disaster.

This is the whole of the story and we might have left it at that had there not been profit and pleasure in the telling; and althoughthere is plent of space on a gravestone to contain, bound in moss, the abridged version of a man's life, detail is always welcome.

Overall, a good story with some moments of great prose. I wouldn't call it a masterpiece, but it does encourage me to seek out some more Nabokov. (Incidentally, I may be stretching things by placing Nabokov in the category of Russian authors. Probably to late now to worry too much about that.)

116CarlosMcRey
Editado: Maio 5, 2009, 12:43 am

Book Started: Ramaseeana
Category: Thugs n' Templars

For some reason, I'm always tempted to refer to this book as The Ramaseeana, maybe because the title sonds quasi-religious to me somehow. I'm guessing the name is derived from Ramasee, the alleged dialect of the Thuggee. (Although there is some contention as to whether it might have been closer to a thieve's cant than a proper dialect.) The heart of the book is a vocabulary of Ramasee words and their use in Thuggee. Judging from the table of contents, a good majority of the page count is taken up by appendixes which are case files of Sleeman's investigations.

This is a book that I don't actually own, but it's old enough to be in the public domain, so I'm reading it off of googlebooks. (Check it out here if you're curious: http://books.google.com/books?id=4rgIAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=lab... I don't own a kindle so I'm reading this one right off the web, which will require reading in spurts.

Book Started: The Keep
Category: Queer (NBSO) Horror

This book intrigued me from the first review of it I read. A 36-year-old guy who's something of a ne'er-do-well goes to work for his cousin, who has purchased an ancient European castle and is fixing it up. It's a pretty nice set up for a modern exploration of some gothic themes: the ancient castle, the identification between a bloodline and a structure, the resurgence of the past.

And to top it all of with a pomo metafictional spin, the story of the guy, his cousin and the castle is a work of fiction being written by an inmate for a writing workshop. As pomo touches go, it actually makes some sense when you think about it.

117CarlosMcRey
Maio 6, 2009, 12:35 am


33. The Keep by Jennifer Egan - finished 5/5/09

There's some intriguing layers to this story. The top-most layer would be that of Danny, a screw-up who has fled New York for a castle in Europe (Germany, Austria, or the Czech Republic, he's not sure which) at the request of his cousin. The castle has been purchased by the cousin, who was a loser early in life, but then earned a fortune on Wall Street. Now he plans to turn the castle into a unique sort of hotel.

The layer below is that of the person writing the story, an inmate who is in a writing program. The story is in part an attempt to impress Holly, who is running the writing program. Later, we learn of an additional layer to the story, which I won't reveal since it'd be a bit of a spoiler.

Intriguing, sometimes funny, occassionally moving, but a little bit disappointing. There's a lot of interesting conceits, elements and characters, but a lot of them felt a bit underdeveloped. Just the story of Danny alone, if a little better fleshed out, would have been more satisfying; so I'm not sure if much was gained by adding the additional layers. While I have a weakness for the effective use of pomo techniques, this novel felt as if it split the difference between being an involved exploration of its various themes (a la House of Leaves) and being a tight story concentrating on a few characters, without really achieving the satisfaction of either approach.

118CarlosMcRey
Maio 6, 2009, 1:49 am

Additional update on Duma Key:

Sometimes I wonder if I have a chip on my shoulder towards King, and if there's some way I can move beyond it. I can appreciate that his writing reflects talent and skill, but I've never found myself actually loving it the way some people seem to. And sometimes it seems almost clumsy.

Case in point: an interesting plot development arises in this novel. The protag, Edgar Freemantle, is going to get a visit from his daughter, who has told him she has some news to share. He picks up his colored pencils to do some drawing and ends up painting a picture of a young man. Having painted the picture, he comes to the realization that the young man must be his daughter's fiance, and that her engagement (which he has not heard of prior to that point) is the big news that she has come to share. And it turns out to be true, which is somewhat mysterious.

But there's no indication that Edgar was a New Agey type, so how exactly does he take developing psychic powers so in stride. In fact, why is his first assumption upon drawing the picture end up being that the young man is his daughter's fiance? I would think it more likely that the artist would assume that the person they were drawing was someone they had seen before--on the street or in a dream--but had forgotten about. And then when he finds out he's actually drawn a picture, down to every last detail, of someone who he's never met but has suddenly become a part of his life, he'd be kind of shaken up about it. That seems like the more plausible approach. By comparison, I thought the way it was developed broke with both effective suspense and psychological realism.

Anyway, there's no point in prejudging the novel based on one akwardly developed element, so I'll keep going.

There have been some effective moments so far. The first is his daughter's effusive reaction to his paintings, which seems all out of proportion to the actual pictures as described in the narrative. That is kind of eerie.

119CarlosMcRey
Maio 8, 2009, 2:21 am

Book started: Hijo de hombre
Category: Orientales y Otros Americanos
Nationality: Paraguayo

The novel takes place in a small village in Paraguay in the early part of the 20th century. References are made to 19th century history, including Francia, who ruled with dictatorial powers.

120CarlosMcRey
Maio 16, 2009, 3:44 pm

Book Started: Hot Water
Category: Lighter Fare

This is my first foray into Wodehouse, though I have previously read a couple of books inspired on his work. One was the Wodehouse/Lovecraft pastiche Scream for Jeeves, which was pretty entertaining. The other was a self-published work whose name escapes me (Unforeseen Circumstances? Unexpected Results?). I chose this particular book because a) I'd read enough about Wodehouse to think I might be missing out on something and b) I found it at a library book sale.

I'm only a few chapters in, but it's quite good so far. It appears to be something of a Jazz Age caper/comedy of manners sort of story.

121CarlosMcRey
Maio 18, 2009, 2:41 am


34. Hijo de hombre by Augusto Roa Bastos - finished 5/16/09

A fascinating and often harrowing novel about Paraguay, centered largely around the town of Sapukai (Sapucai? That seems to be the way it's spelled on Google maps.), though a significant portion is also taken up by the Chaco War, which Bolivia and Paraguay fought over a region of desert that was supposed to contain considerable oil reserves.

There's an interesting texture to the novel, with every odd-numbered chapter told in first-person by one of the characters from the town. There is a definite magical realist feel to the novel, though any supernatural elements are left ambiguous. It did remind me of A Hundred Years of Solitude in the way that the story of a town reflects the story of the nation itself. In Solitude, the myth-like quality (magical elements, repeated names) of the story softens a lot of the grimmer elements, something which doesn't really happen with this novel. Roa Bastos command of language (and icorporation of Guarani) is certainly striking, but never masks the truth of the terrible things that happen.

122CarlosMcRey
Maio 18, 2009, 2:54 am

Book Started: Angels and Demons
Category: Audiobooks

For reasons I won't get into, I started A&D even though I haven't finished Duma Key yet. I'll admit straight out that my expectations are pretty low going into this one. (Why am I reading it? Morbid curiousity?) From what little I've read of Brown's work (or about it), I'd say it's pretty obvious that he's not exactly a prose stylist. So far, that confirmation has been confirmed. I wouldn't call it awful, just the sort of writing that is functional solely for moving a plot forward. Sure, there are attempts at things like atmosphere and character development, but you can't get there from here. (Or that dog won't hunt. I'm not sure which cliché/colloquialism is more appropriate here.)

Perhaps I should have been a little less prepared for how preposterous the "non-fictional" elements are. Brown even flubs simple things, such as describing hatha yoga as a Buddhist system of excercize. (Considering this was Brown's first novel, his editor doesn't have an excuse.)

So far, it's relatively fun, though I'm still at the point where I'm finding Brown's tics amusingly ham-handed instead of annoying.

123CarlosMcRey
Maio 19, 2009, 10:45 pm

Update on Angels and Demons:

I have to admit, I was doing okay with the abuses of historical accuracy, scientific theory, and the English language. Then, on disc 6, Dan Brown introduces a sassy black woman character. It's not enough to earn my hatred, but, seriously, is no cliché to be left unused?

124CarlosMcRey
Maio 20, 2009, 9:03 pm


35. Hot Water by P. G. Wodehouse - finished 5/19/09

This is a fun British farce, part heist tale, part comedy of manners. It's honestly a little difficult to describe, what with all the various characters mixed up in escapades in St. Rocque, France and the Chateu de Vissac. To count, there's a US Senator, his daughter, her fiance, an ex-Yale football player, two rich American expats, a French Comte, a safe cracker, a con artist, and several other characters. Not to mention that several of the characters are pretending to be other people.

There were no real gut-busting moments for me, but it did stay consistently funny, which can be tricky to pull off. Nicely paced, too.

125CarlosMcRey
Maio 21, 2009, 1:13 am

Update on Angels and Demons:

Holy s@#$! Robert Langdon just claimed that the Christian practice of Holy Communion was borrowed from the Aztecs! Um, I don't even need Wikipedia to guess which orifice he pulled that out of.

Sometimes I wonder if Dan Brown has a clue how ridiculous this all is? If he let the reader in on the joke, this book might be more fun.

And you know what I'm starting to hate? "Symbology" Why isn't Langdon just a historian, an anthropologist, a religious scholar or even a freakin' semiotician? (Which is an actual field of study.) Holy Kali H. Bagala on a cracker, why invent such a stupid, ugly word as "symbology"? Dan Brown, why do you hate the English language so much?

126cmbohn
Maio 21, 2009, 11:39 am

See, all this is why I didn't bother to finish The Da Vinci Code.

127eairo
Maio 21, 2009, 1:11 pm

No need to even start Angels and Demons then---these comments are probably much more fun.

128CarlosMcRey
Maio 22, 2009, 11:02 pm

If there's one word that really sums up Brown's abuse of English, it's "symbology." The word would seem to imply the study of symbols, as reflected in the fact that Langdon is allegedly a "symbologist." But then Brown goes on to talk about Christian "symbology," which implies that "symbology" is analogous to symbolism or iconography. The man uses language so badly, he even misuses terms he has made up himself.

I think I just don't got most modern thrillers. I understand the idea of a genre that emphasizes suspense, one that leaves the reader on edge as to what is going to happen next. But so many of them, and A&D is a good example, don't even really achieve that. I mean what's suspenseful about expository dialogue, cliched character descriptions, heavy handed depictions of groups the author dislikes? (And people who write thrillers should lay off of the media for appealing to the same lurid fascination that drives the market for books like these. It's less moral repugnance than professional jealousy.)

One moment the heroes are running to the next location trying to stop the next gruesome act of violence, and then it cuts to a chapter about Vatican ritual. I think the idea of those moments is to up the suspense by withholding the action, but it's such a naked ploy that I feel like, Just get back to the story.

Incidentally, they are trying to decide if the Pope was poisoned by the Illuminati. Apparently, the poison would have turned his tongue black, which brings back fond memories of The Name of the Rose.

129CarlosMcRey
Maio 23, 2009, 4:16 pm

Book Started: Homenaje a los Maestros de San Luis que Respondieron a la Encuesta de Folklore de 1921
Category: Obscure Works

I have to confess to some nepotism here, as this book was written by my aunt. I found out about this book while looking for works on Argentine folklore. The book is based on a 1921 project where the federal government enlisted the aid of school teachers in writing down and collecting stories from the oral traditions across Argentina. This book covers the San Luis province portion of it. So far, I've just read the background information which puts the project into a historical context, specifically two movements. The first is the election of Yrigoyen, which ushered in reforms in several areas, including education. The other is the post World War I wave of European immigration, which led to a new concern over what it meant to be Argentine and resulted in some cultural ferment.

130CarlosMcRey
Maio 23, 2009, 9:07 pm

Update on Angels and Demons:

Dan Brown has now officially earned my hatred. In Disc 11, the action comes to a screeching halt for a flashback where a Swiss Guard and the Pope's chamberlain discuss how God can be all-knowing and all-loving when there is so much suffering in the world. Aargh! This is like some Religion 101 conversation, and I already know that the chamberlain's canned answer (the kind of thing you can find in copies of the Watchtower) is going to be treated like some deep insight. Thriller writers who pretend to be theologians? I think there's a word for it: pretentious. A book this trashy really does not have the write to be this pretentious. Not to mention, Hello, get going with the frickin' action already!

131cmbohn
Maio 23, 2009, 11:49 pm

You are totally cracking me up!

132CarlosMcRey
Maio 25, 2009, 11:23 pm

Thanks, cmbohn. This is kind of a fun book to which to write down reactions, since there is so much that is absurd or silly that is treated as if it were serious. (Which is a nice source of unintentional irony.) I sort of wish I had done more of it so that, for example--and (Update) and also (Spoiler Warning)--now that it turns out that Davros was the bad guy all along, I could just say, "In a shocking twist, it turns out Davros was the bad guy all along!" without having to explain which character I nicknamed Davros. (Though, I doubt it would be hard to guess.) Sadly, no Daleks have made an appearance.

133CarlosMcRey
Maio 26, 2009, 2:17 am

Book Started: The Collected Stories of Isaac Babel
Category: Eastern European Authors
Country: Russia

I ended up picking up this volume because I had seen Babel mentioned in connection with Schulz and Kafka, as pre-WWII Jewish writers of note. So far, I'm just in the Red Cavalry section which is based on Babel's time serving with a Cossack regiment in a brief war fought in Poland. The stories are an interesting mix, sometimes reflecting the sense of mystery as in Schulz, but more often reflecting a brutal connection to reality that give them a very different feel.

134CarlosMcRey
Maio 26, 2009, 2:28 am

Is it possible for bad novels to cause Stockholm Syndrome? I'm almost done with Angels and Demons, but for the last few disks I've moved beyond irritation or incredulousness to a sort of giddy delight in the campy grotesquerie of the whole climax. The humor value is enhanced by Brown's painfully overwrought prose.

135CarlosMcRey
Maio 27, 2009, 2:33 am


36. Angels and Demons by Dan Brown - finished 5/25/09

In an odd bit of coincidence (or is it?) my local paper ran an editorial called "The success and dishonesty of Dan Brown's stories" today. The piece compares him to "ideologues like Ayn Rand, and spiritual gurus like Eckhart Tolle and Deepak Chopra," which I think is about right on. That is, as bad a book as A&D is, I did get the sense that Brown was attempting to make a heartfelt case for the role of religion in modern life. I suspect that what people respond to in Brown's fiction isn't the plot so much, but the ideological aspect. I can't say I would have reacted differently if my point of view had been closer to Brown's. I rather doubt it, as I'm not a fan of didactic elements in fiction. (The didactism of the 40-year-old virgin in A Prayer for Owen Meany significantly decreased my ability to enjoy that novel.)

I could quibble with Brown's portrayal of the "struggle between science and religion," but if I were to begin to enumerate (not to mention elaborate on) every mistake, both factual and conceptual, in A&D, well, that would make for a very long post. I can see why people put out entire books promising to give you The Secrets of the DaVinci Code. (Besides, you know, monetary gain.)

I still find his portrayal of the media rather noxious, even though it's largely broadcast and cable news that he takes aim at. I don't have any particular fondness for broadcast news, which tends to be biased to spectacle and conflict over education or information. But A&D presents the same kind of lurid appeal as the "it-bleeds-it-leads" philosophy of your daily local news, which it raps in the same kind of self-serious morality that seems ripe for parody.

After Brown's multiple abuses to language and history, it feels good to be back on Duma Key. I've gained a new appreciation for King, who whatever his faults, really can write.

136tracyfox
Maio 28, 2009, 12:17 pm

Many hoots of laughter catching up on your recount of listening to A&D. After "but, seriously, is no cliché to be left unused?" I had to keep reading to the end of the thread even though I have no wish to revisit the Dan Brown I have read.

137CarlosMcRey
Editado: Jun 7, 2009, 9:54 pm


37. Homenaje a los Maestros de San Luis que Respondieron a la Encuesta de Folklore de 1921

Interesting collection of folklore and stories collected in the San Luis province of Argentina, as well as background on the collection. Includes some stories about gauchos, a long poem about the death of Facundo Quiroga, and some fairy tale-style stories. Among the fairy tales was "Mediopollo" ("Half-chicken") which I heard as a kid, but which strikes me as quite bizarre now. The protagonist as a chicken who has been cut in half and adopted by an old woman. He then leaves home to find a job, and ends up taking along an iguana, a fox, a tiger, a lion, and a river--who all ride in his stomach.

138CarlosMcRey
Maio 31, 2009, 5:34 pm

Book Started: The Trial
Category: Eastern European Authors
Nationality: Czech

Kafka has been a long time absence in my reading experience. Except for the metamorphosis, the only works of his I had read had been for school, and those had amount to only a handful. I've always intended to read his stuff in the original German, but it has been so long since I practiced German that I think it would take me forever to get through even a short work.

So, I'm excited to go back into his work, especially with one of the novels, since I've never read those. So far, pretty intriguing. There's a nice seamlessness between the nightmarish and banal elements in the story.

139CarlosMcRey
Editado: Jun 7, 2009, 9:55 pm


38. The Collected Stories of Isaac Babel - finished 5/31/09

Babel's stories start with the section called Red Cavalry, which are based on his own experiences serving with the Cossacks in a Polish military campaign. Babel chronicles not only his own sometimes difficult relationship with the other soldiers, but the experiences of civilians and soldiers in contested regions. Later stories delve into the Jewish community of Odessa, as well as a broader range of stories based in life in 1930s Russia. Like Schulz, Babel's literary career was cut short by government violence, as he found himself on the wrong side of one of Stalin's purges in the late 1930s.

140CarlosMcRey
Jun 3, 2009, 6:48 am

A few final thoughts on Angels and Demons:

I skipped reading The Da Vinci Code--I opted for seeing the movie instead. It wasn't an unpleasant experience. If anything, I'd call it pretty entertaining overall. The parts I found most disappointing were the attempts at presenting the secret history of the Templars, since that was done rather poorly. (An account of the arrest of the Templars that never even mentions the French Crown, Baphomet or sodomy? Why leave out all the good stuff?) At the time, I wondered how much had been lost in translating the work to the screen.

Judging by A&D, the blame for dumbing down the history falls pretty squarely on the shoulders of Dan Brown. Actually, "dumbing down" is too kind; there's a ratio of like 90% bullshit to 10% fact in most of the history presented here. It's unclear if Brown has simplified and fabricated the factual material just to make it more entertaining or to support his arguments. The former is understandable, but I find the latter sort of obnoxious. I realize all fiction is fabrication, but there's something I find shallow about gesturing towards a factual basis without ever taking the facts seriously. I can see how it would appeal to someone who's only heard vague references to the Illuminati, but even a rudimentary knowledge of their history nullifies the plausibility of the story.

Which I guess makes it an Illuminati thriller for people who normally don't read Illuminati thrillers, which I think pretty much sums up the overall failure of the book. For me, it lacked the intelligence of Foucault's Pendulum and the giddy craziness of The Illuminatus! Trilogy, leaving it in the barren middle ground of mediocrity. The book did manage to achieve some camp appeal for me, but I suspect it wasn't what Dan Brown was going for.

141CarlosMcRey
Jun 4, 2009, 3:17 am


39. Duma Key by Stephen King - finished 6/3/09

Despite some of my grumbling earlier, I did end up enjoying the novel overall. As a story of a man trying to overcome a near-death experience through art and friendship, it's an engaging and convincing portrayal. As a horror story, well, not so much. It does have its spooky elements, and even a few moments that achieve creepiness, but the horror aspect is pretty attenuated. If anything the supernatural threat, named Persephone, struck me as more amusing than frightening. (Great Old Ones should not be named after hungry Greek broads.) The final showdown felt like it was sort of copied from Ring, and the very ending feels like a bit of a rehash of The Shawshank Redemption.

142CarlosMcRey
Editado: Jun 5, 2009, 12:57 am

Book Started: The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot
Category: Audiobooks

This book starts out sort of like Angels and Demons, with a scholar flying to Switzerland on a secretive mission. That's pretty much where the similarities end. I'd heard of Ehrman before, on a free sample CD I received from The Teaching Company, where he talked about the Nag Hammadi manuscripts and the relationship of Gnosticism to early Christianity. And as I mentioned regarding Lamb, I've found Judas to be an interesting figure ever since watching The Last Temptation of Christ. (Interestingly, Jorge Luis Borges also wrote a short story where Judas betrayal is an intentional fulfillment of prophecy.) So far, Ehrman is just reviewing the better known portrayals of Judas from the New Testament.

Book Started: Buzon de tiempo
Category: Orientales y otros americanos
Nationality: Uruguayan

I was originally going to read Fuentes' Reinos Originarios, but then I found out it was a play and wasn't sure if I was in the mood for that. And I heard about Benedetti's death and figured this was a good a time as any to get acquainted with this author, who I'd previously heard of only in passing. This is a short story collection, but it kicks off with a pretty evocative poem (and before that an epigraph from the medieval heretic Giordano Bruno) about how the things in life are like smoke signals and only barely that, but that even smoke takes a heart of fire to produce. (I wish I could say a little more about it, but I'm at a bit of a loss when responding to poetry. I'm trying to fix that, but it's more of a long term project.)

143CarlosMcRey
Jun 8, 2009, 7:12 pm


40. The Trial by Franz Kafka - finished 6/7/09

This is the story of Josef K., who is one day arrested and accused of undefined charges. Since he considers himself innocent, he at first considers these charges and the court to which he is ordered to report in order to respond to them to be frivolous. The people around him react rather differently, and soon he finds himself embroiled in the machinations of the trial, which follow a logic that appears equally ironclad and insane.

Many times during the novel, I thought of Kafka's short story/parable "Before the Law" and though it quite brilliant when the parable itself turns up in what may be the climax of the novel. (Did K. write the parable for the novel, or was it written separately and later incorporated into the novel?) The parable here is told to Josef K. by a priest, the prison chaplain, who is trying to warn him that his trial is going badly. The priest tries to explain the meaning of the parable, but his conclusions seem as perverse as the rest of the logic of the trial.

The Trial itself seems to stand as a sort of parable itself, but for what? Is it just, as the surface would seem to suggest, for the arbitrariness of justice under totaliatarian government? The existence of mankind under a cruel and indifferent god? The absurdity of life itself?

144cmbohn
Jun 9, 2009, 2:54 pm

I had trouble with The Trial. I got that whole faceless bureaucracy thing, but I thought Joseph K. was a very unlikeable character. He was so arrogant, even while he's in trouble. He just never seems to get it until the very end. Plus it was hard to read - huge, 6 page paragraphs in some places, and hard to figure out as well.

And I am so frustrated! I wanted to read some of the South American books you reviewed on here, and my library had NONE of them. I couldn't believe that! I kept searching the catalog, but no. Not a single book.

145CarlosMcRey
Jun 10, 2009, 12:23 am

Yeah, Josef K. is definitely not a sympathetic figure, although that seemed less of an issue as things got worse for him. The scene with Block was kind of key in this. Block seems like he's tried to do everything he can to win the trial, and it's reduced his whole existence to a shell of its former self. Additionally, the worse things got, the more his obnoxiousness felt justified. (Even if unproductive!) I think there was sort of a slow burn for me until the Block chapter, at which point it gained a whole new level. Then the conversation with the chaplain brought it to a pretty dramatic peak. (Maybe it's just me, and the fact that I had read "Before the Law" so long ago but never stopped to think about it in the ways the characters discuss it.)

I am reminded a bit of Fowles' The Magus which also features an unlikeable main character who never seems to get how far in over his head he is. That character ends up with some sort of half-assed redemption, which I found pretty unsatisfying.

I'm sorry to hear about the lack of books in the library. Does your library allow you to suggest titles they should add to the collection, because their Argentine selection could benefit from a few recommendations. :) (Also, it's not really a subtitute for the book, but there's a pretty good movie adaptation of Plata Quemada which should be available on NetFlix.

146CarlosMcRey
Jun 10, 2009, 2:16 am

Book Started: Cuentos Selectos II - Marco Denevi
Category: Obscure Works
Shared With: 0

Started this yesterday. I keep thinking I should get this collection confused with Mario Benedetti's, but the names aren't really that similar, are they? Denevi is another lesser known Argentine writer, and this volume features 10 of his short stories. The introduction breaks them up into three different categories'--epiphanies, fables and some other one I'd have to look up. So far, I've read two of the "epiphanies," which were quite good.

147cmbohn
Jun 10, 2009, 3:57 pm

I will find out about suggesting new books. We have a lot of Spanish speaking patrons in my city, so I'm sure that they would enjoy these books. I would just like to see them in English too, as my Spanish is very limited.

148CarlosMcRey
Jun 11, 2009, 2:03 am

Book Started: Nightmare Abbey
Category: Lighter Fare

Nightmare Abbey is a satire on the gothic genre, sort of like Northanger Abbey. I actually thought Northanger was a bit light on the Gothic satire, maybe because I had recently read The Mysteries of Udolpho which seemed like it would take a somewhat more concerted effort than can be snuck into a comedy of manners. Nightmare is really short, practically a pamphlet, but I'm curious to see if it does the satire better. So far, it seems to be headed in the right direction.

I think this is the most books I've been juggling in a while. Luckily, so many of them are short story collections.

cmbohn, I know Martin Fierro is available in a bilingual edition, so that'd be sort of win-win.

149CarlosMcRey
Jun 17, 2009, 1:10 am


41. The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot by Bart D. Ehrman - finished 6/13/09

The first part of the book describes the discovery and eventual translation of the ancient text of the Gospel of Judas Iscariot. Though it's obvious how it ends, it still makes for a good read, in part because of some of the colorful characters involved.

The Gospel of Judas turns out to be a Gnostic gospel, but Ehrman does a pretty good job of presenting how it fits into the greater picture of early Christianity. Pretty intriguing overall.


42. Nightmare Abbey by Thomas Love Peacock - finished 6/15/09

About 1/3 of the way through The Mysteries of Udolpho, the heroine sees something behind a curtain that causes her to faint. It is not until about a gazilion pages later, when the book has almost finished, that it is finally revealed to the reader what she thought she saw and what it really is. Which makes me wonder if the Gothic genre is beyond parody.

So, Nightmare Abbey doesn't really take direct aim at satirizing the Gothic novel, though it did get a few chuckles out of me from what it does. It also mines humor from a satirical look at some of the ideas in vogue at the time. I have to admit it wasn't what I expected, but I still ended up enjoying it.

150CarlosMcRey
Jun 17, 2009, 1:25 am

Book Started: Breakfast of Champions
Category: Audiobooks

I read Slaughterhouse-Five in college, and though I liked the concept, I don't remember really glomming on to the way it was written. Not sure if it was the book or me. Breakfast of Champions, though, I'm really digging. Like the way the story is being told, which sometimes reminds me of an American Douglas Adams. Some of the science fiction stories brought up also seem like demented versions of Philip L. Dick stories. But Vonnegut has his own style, so quite cool so far.

Book Started: Heart of Darkness
Category: Eastern European Authors
Nationality: Polish

OK, as with Nabakov, Conrad is Eastern European by birth but became famous for writing in a language other than his mother tongue. Well, whatcha gonna do? I actually had read this book way back in high school, though I could not tell you much about my impression at the time. So far, I'm finding Conrad's style can be tricky to get into, but when it hits right, it's sort of hypnotic.

151CarlosMcRey
Editado: Jun 20, 2009, 3:21 am


43. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad - finished 6/19/09

As per my prerogative, I'll begin with a tangent. In Children of Kali, author Kevin Rushby touches briefly on the British colonialist Job Charnok. Charnok is said to have been the founder of Calcutta (or Kolkata). He was apparently something of a colorful figure, reputed to have come to blend in closely with the Indians. He married an Indian woman and after her death was said to have sacrificed a rooster once a year by her grave. Rushby posits Charnok as representative of the East India Company men who first came to India--greedy perhaps, but also more colorful and curious about the lands to which they travelled. He contrasts Charnok with W.H. Sleeman, who is central to the history that Rushby is attempting to explore, and who represents his generation of British colonialists, motivated by a missionary zeal for the British goal of civilizing the vast reaches of the empire.

Colonel Kurtz, too, appears to brought a certain missionary zeal into the far reaches of an empire, one which had already seen its share of less scrupulous invaders. But his civilizing mission fails, dooming him to a confrontation with some dark and unnamable truth. Is Sleeman the example that puts the lie to Conrad's narrative--a man who managed to bring the civilization that the empire had always promised? Or is he a kind of Kurtz, as Rushby seems to conclude, a "hero" whose efforts served to cover up the naked larceny of imperial enterprise? Was his rewriting of the law in pursuit of Thuggee the reasonable strategy of a man faced with an insidious enemy or the destructive overreaction of a colonial invader to the land and people he did not understand?

And what to make of the fact that Sleeman, too, died shortly after having left the subjugated land on a boat bound for the homeland he would never see again?

I didn't go to the Belgian Congo expecting to find Thuggee or their colonial pursuers, but this is one of those moments when I'm struck by how, as Eco's William of Baskerville would say, books talk of and to other books.

As for Heart itself, as is probably clear by now, it ended up captivating me. I can see how it is frustrating, and there were moments when its prose struck me as almost impenetrable. There were others when it was captivating. almost hypnotic. And as it moved towards the end, it seemed to grow more in power, until the final scene and it's encroaching darkness.

This edition comes with five critical essays at the end, which I went ahead and read. They were all pretty solid, some with pretty good insights.

152CarlosMcRey
Jun 24, 2009, 9:36 pm


44. Buzon de tiempo by Mario Benedetti - finished 6/23/09

This was a nice collection of short stories. There are some themes that pop up over and over again, including the passage of time, solitude and the damage left by the dictatorships of the 1970s. (Specifically the rioplatense dictatorships--that is, those of Argentina and Uruguay.) Of particular note is Benedetti's talent for dialogue, with several stories told principally through that device. The book is divided into three sections, with the first being the most varied--some are somber, some funny, some a bit Borgesian. The second section has stories that are all told as letters written from one person to another, save one that is a voice mail. The final section is the seasons, with the different seasons reflecting points in a person's life. This last section, in particular, lends itself to the sort of stories that end in little epiphanies.

153CarlosMcRey
Jun 24, 2009, 9:47 pm

Book Started: Cold Hand in Mine
Category: Queer (NBSO) Horror - Goths and Weirdos

Robert Aickman referred to his own stories as "strange tales," and from what I know they are sort of obliquely supernatural or eerie. (IIRC, one critic I've read claimed that Aickman wrote "ghost stories in which there was no ghost.") The first story I've read so far certainly reflects that. It's named "The Swords" and is about a young man working as a traveling salesman. It has some nicely atmospheric (and understated) touches: a decayed English village, a pathetic carnival and its strange sideshow, an inexplicable event. There's obviously something strange going on, but it's never quite clear what, nor does the narrator ever get a good grasp on it. So far, pretty excited about this one.

154CarlosMcRey
Editado: Jul 5, 2009, 12:59 am

Book Started: The Double
Category: Eastern European Authors
Nationality: Russian

I know very little about Dostoevsky besides that he's Russian, dead and has influenced both Roberto Arlt and Woody Allen. (OK, not entirely true. I've heard of Crime and Punishment.) I also didn't really know much about The Double, beyond that it expresses one man's deteriorating mental state. Based on that I was expecting to be introduced to a character who is a little off, and then to see his insanity slowly reveal itself. (Either as we get to know him or as neurosis slips into obsession slips into full-blown madness.)

So, it's a bit of a shocker to me just how nutty this character is from the get go. Not that it's bad, but certainly not what I was expecting. His manner of speech, how he crashes a party--there's not much he's done so far that doesn't suggest he needs serious mental health treatment.

Incidentally, The Double is only one third of the Three Short Novels anthology, which also includes Notes from the Underground and The Eternal Husband. I was originally going to read the whole anthology for this challenge, but frankly found it a little intimidating.

Sadly, I think I'm allergic to Russian names. I had this problem with Isaac Babel as well. I can't keep my -vichs, -yoffs, etc. separate and could not tell you the name of the main character without looking it up.

Book Started: In the Penny Arcade
Category: Queer (NBSO) Horror - Weirdos and Goths

I picked up this book mainly on the strength of its cover art and its inside jacket copy, though what interested me may best be summed up by the blurb from a Mr. Walter Abish:
Is it possible to remain unmoved by Steven Millhauser's magic realm in which a visionary toymaker, a sleepwalker, a puppet theater or clouds in ancient Cathay illuminate an otherness we too once may have experienced?
Of course, it's not entirely accurate to place it under a category with "horror" as part of the description. It is sunnier than Aickamn's subtle uncaniness and quieter than Schulz' somewhat psychedelic fancies, but still existing somewhere on that wonder-terror continum. (Or at least I gather so far.)

The first two stories have nothing that can really be called supernatural. The first, about an obsessive German toymaker, was really quite captivating.

155CarlosMcRey
Editado: Jun 27, 2009, 12:48 am


45. Cuentos Selectos II - Marco Denevi - finished 6/25/09

Okay, the breakdown of the stories is into a) realistic, character-based stories; b) idiosyncratic metaphors and c) fables. It's an interesting mix, with strong and weak entries in all the categories, but my favorite came from category b). "Decadencia y Caida" ("Decline and Fall") was a nicely odd story about the takeover of a house belonging to a wealthy family by some odd rodent creature. In some ways it was reminiscent of Cortazar's "House Taken Over" but with its own odd vibe.

156CarlosMcRey
Jun 29, 2009, 3:05 am


46. Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut - finished 6/27/09

I have to admit I didn't know what to expect coming in, but I was really impressed by this. The story is sort of deceptively simple: man goes nut one night. And I'm not entirely sure if the way certain things are left unresolved is frustrating or haunting. (Though I lean towards the latter.) But I found the ending strangely moving, sort of heartbreaking and ironically distanced at the same time. Actually that's a combination that could be applied to a good part of the novel.

On a tangent, I had another thought on Duma Key today:

I've been seeing other people's response to the novel. There seems to be some division on whether this is King back in classic form or a good example of King's current flabby self-indulgence. (I know it can be a bad idea to read too many reviews before writing one's own, but I often find it too tempting with popular works to get a feel for what other people have noticed.)

I haven't read enough King to say which it is. I was struck, though by how much of a pastiche the Big Bad is. Now, lots of horror monsters are pastiches, but Persephone never seemed to me to rise beyond Lovecraftian monster + Greek name + zombies + Samara from Ring + unspecified connection to psychic powers. This isn't entirely out of place for a King story. Barlow of 'Salem's Lot was just Dracula in New England after all. Somehow, I don't think it worked that well in this case.

157CarlosMcRey
Editado: Jul 1, 2009, 2:16 am

Book Started: Rant
Category: Audiobooks

I'm somewhat ambivalent when it comes to Palahniuk. I enjoyed Lullaby although the main characters seemed to be future Darwin Award nominees, thought Diary was an entertaining train wreck, found myself turning Republican* as I read Choke, and thought Haunted was tedious, stupid and pretentious. I really don't find myself sharing whatever love people have for his prose style. I have to give him that it's distinctive, but that doesn't mean it doesn't sometimes edge off into tiresome. (And for now, I'm going to skip over my whole pros/cons checklist on Palahniuk.)

So, I have to confess that, just as with Angels and Demons, there is an element of morbid curiosity to my choice of this book. So far (Disc 1), I'm enjoying it. It's structured as an oral history, an assemblage of short statements--sometimes a sentence or two, up to a few pages--from a variety of individuals and sources. So far, it seems to achieve something that Haunted failed at: creating a large, plausible cast of characters.

This is aided by the audiobook format, since different actors/readers are being used for different individuals, and they get to introduce changes in voice that wouldn't be clear from reading it. Even with the voice actors and Palahniuk's attempt to vary his style, there's still a good amount of ventriloquism going on--that is the sense that these are personas animated by Palahniuk. That's one of the downfalls of having such a distinctive style.

I think the other thing is by going science-fiction, I feel less annoyed by the dubious collection of facts that is another Palahiunk trait. So, cautious optimism so far.

*No offense intended to Republicans. I just find it ironic given Palahniuk's point of view that the book seemed to make me less sympathetic to said POV.

158CarlosMcRey
Jul 4, 2009, 6:43 pm

Book Started: The Somnambulist
Category: Queer (NBSO) Horror - Goths and Weirdos

I tossed this one into the Weird category mostly on reputation. Something about Victorian London and an investigator and something, something--Lovecraft--and some LT comments about it being really strange. If it sounds flippant, well, I must admit I never got a good sense of why I wanted to read it, but thought it sounded like the sort of thing that'd be up my alley.

Having gotten a good deal of the way into it, I'd say it was a good choice. I wouldn't call it mind blowing, but it is an enjoyable read. The aesthetic strikes me as New Weird, though applied to a real historical setting. There's a "magic trick" early on that seems to have been borrowed from Aickman's "The Swords" (as featured in Cold Hand in Mine) only without the obvious sexual subtext. (At least, I think it's not meant to be sexual.) There's probably tons of other homages or easter eggs as well.

159CarlosMcRey
Jul 5, 2009, 1:33 am


47. Cold Hand in Mine by Robert Aickman - finished 6/30/09

This is a nice collection of strange stories. One one level, there's not that much variety: the stories range from subtle uncanniness to, well, less subtle uncanniness with a disturbing element or two at the end. And yet, the stories themselves had a nicely peculiar sort of variety.

Aside from possibly "The Swords," the best known story would have to be "Pages from a Young Girl's Journal," which I believe shows up in many vampire anthologies. I have to admit when I started the story, I already knew it was going to be a vampire story. So I was surprised at how skillfully Aickman managed to keep me off balance.

The stories were reminiscent of Ramsey Campbell, who also writes some great short stories where the horror sneaks up on the reader, but I found Aickman's style a little more straightforward than Campbell's, whose stories can sometimes be a bit opaque.


48. In the Penny Arcade by Steven Millhauser - finished 6/30/09

Well, weird fiction (even "light weird fiction," which I totally and arbitrarily made up) isn't the right term for Millhauser's work. What sense of the weird or fantastic is often confined to his style, not any of the elements in the stories. This is especially true for the middle three stories (all with female protagonist/narrators) which are based more on the working out of individual epiphanies.

Still, there are some intriguing elements. The first story is the longest, something like novelette length perhaps, and is an account of a 19th century German inventor of clockwork figures. Maybe it's the weird use of automatons or the Middle European milieu, but despite the lack of anything clearly supernatural, this struck me as being pretty uncanny.

The last three stories also have their fantastic elements, from the wild snowmen that show up in "Snowmen" to the decayed wonders "In the Penny Arcade." The last story "Cathay" actually pretty much full on fantastic, telling little vignettes of a mysterious land based roughly on China.

160CarlosMcRey
Jul 6, 2009, 8:13 pm


49. The Somnambulist by Jonathan Barnes - finished 7/4/09

This turned out to be pretty enjoyable overall, definitely odd enough to keep me interested. The story concerns a stage magician whose hobby (and passion) is solving peculiar cases. (The more gruesome and gothic, the better.) His partner is a strange mute giant known only as the Somnambulist--he seems like a pretty dead-on Cabinet of Dr. Caligari reference, although Caligari has little to do with Victorian England.

They get asked to help investigate the death of a third-rate actor and get wind of a scheme that threatens the very existence of London itself. It's full of odd elements--immortals (both backwards aging and deliriously murderous), possibly fake mediums, albino arsonists, undead poets, prostitutes with birth defects--and they admittedly don't always tie together quite well.

Overall, I'd say it was an enjoyable read. Not brilliant. The pace is pretty good, although it does have its dead spots. The narrator is an interesting conceit, which also bumped up the enjoyment level for me a little bit. I don't know if I'd seek out anything else by Barnes, but if someone were to recommend another of his works, I'd probably give it a shot.

161CarlosMcRey
Editado: Jul 6, 2009, 9:12 pm

I'm still working on Dostoevsky's The Double, though it's slow going. I'm not sure if its the writing style (or the way its been translated), the Russian names, the sort of slow crawl of the action or the main character's mental unsoundness, but I can only read a little bit before I start to lose track and have to go back and reread. I actually read a huge chunk yesterday, but couldn't bring myself to read more today, instead opting to start something new. (But I only have 30 pages left, so I am not giving up.)

Rant is pretty enjoyable, though Palahniuk seems to lack a good sense of character. He has one elementary school teacher talking about how she tries to emphasize to her students that reality is consensual, that things only have meaning because everyone agrees they do. An elementary school teacher? In a podunk nowhere town? Maybe there's some backstory where it turns out that she's really a free-thinking hippie that has settled in Hicksville for its cheap rent and proximity to the biannual Rainbow Gatherings. (If so, Palahniuk gives no indication.) And that goes double for the main character, who appears to have gone from Tom Sawyer to Tyler Durden over the span of one spider bite. (Dammit, Simmons, that spider had genetic material from both Salvador Dali and Che Guevarra spliced into it's DNA! How could you let it escape?!... My spider sense is tingling; that must mean there's an opportunity to subvert consensual reality!)

I guess this points to another flaw I find in a lot of Palahniuk's work, not just the characterization but pacing or flow. Here we have a kid who basically goes from playing with boogers and hunting easter eggs to trying to undermine the whole power structure of a small town. What it lacks is any sense of logical progression, of one thing leading to another, slowly raising the stakes or experimenting and then building on it. There's no sense that these things tie together in a way that gives them emotional impact. Though less obvious, similar problems plague his other works.

And...

Book Started: The Eyre Affair
Category: Lighter Fare

It's my understanding this book is supposed to be a comedy. Why then, does it feature the Crimean War stretching into the present? Or a murderous book-stealing psychopath? This is supposed to be funny? I know Douglas Adams blew up the earth in the first 100 pages of his most famous work, but he managed to make it both poignant and funny.

And the whole cultural fixation? The fascination with pre-20th Century authors? The Baconites and Will-Speaks and fascination with literary forgeries? The way surrealists are so controversial that they are attacked by gangs of devotees of classic art? I think it's supposed to be quaint and amusing and reflect the richness of British cultural heritage, but all it suggests to me is a nation culturally mired in the Victorian era. Maybe I'm taking it too seriously, but I was honestly surprised how quickly it went from amusing to just dead-on soul-killing.

And then there's this:
It had been of considerable anguish to her that I wasn't spending more time with swollen ankles, haemorrhoids and a bad back, popping out grandchildren and naming them after obscure relatives.
Mr. Fforde, please, please tell me you plagiarized that passage directly from Helen Fielding in some daring bit of cultural larceny. Nothing would depress me more than to think you actually used your own personal neurons to come up with such a dull piece of characterization, so generic that it could be pasted directly into a sub-par Bridget Jones knock-off without anyone being the wiser.

162CarlosMcRey
Editado: Jul 8, 2009, 2:09 am


50. The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde - finished 7/7/09

I wish I could say this turned out well. I wish I could say it was just a slow start, that once the story really got going, it won me over with its wit, its charm, its inventiveness. And as much as I may wish it, it's not going to come through.

(Sigh.) So, the book never really transforms into something good. It does reach a peak of soul-killing awful before descending into welcome mediocrity. The scene which almost had me give up on the book comes pretty much smack dab in the middle and involves the heroine and her bland love interest going to a performance of Richard III. This just needs to be quoted.
Richard opened his mouth to speak and the whole audience erupted in unison:

"When is the winter of our discontent?"

"Now," replied Richard with a cruel smile, "is the winter of our discontent..."

A cheer went up to the chandeliers high in the ceiling. The play had begun. Landen and I cheered with them. Richard III was one of those plays that could repeal the law of diminishing returns; it could be enjoyed over and over again.

"...made glorious summer by this son of York," continued Richard, limping to the side of the stage. On the word 'summer' six hundred people placed sunglasses on and looked up at an imaginary sun.
(Italics from the original. Bold added by me.) It continues on from there with further insufferably whimsical audience participation. Seriously, I just do not get this passage. If the idea is that people in this world celebrate things by mocking them, well, it doesn't reflect anywhere else. If the idea is that England is such a cultural wasteland that they have nothing left to do but cannibalize their great plays into camp classics, well, yeah, that is the impression I get. But why, exactly, is that funny?

This book just doesn't work, doesn't do anything right. It's got all these neat ideas (literary detectives, a plot to kidnap literary detectives, a strange alternate history, time travel) that seem like they should make for a fun, intelligent read. (I'd say it all sounds good on paper, but the copy I read was definitely printed on paper, and it didn't seem to help.) But it's all just so meh!. I know England (and the British Isles overall) have turned out some brilliant comedic writers with great style. I'm sorry but Fforde has no style. It's all just wacky thing followed by wacky thing in a Bataan Death March of Whimsy.

A character invents a machine that allows you to travel into a book or any printed work, and the most clever thing anyone thinks to do is kidnap Jane Eyre and hold her for ransom. And the book still doesn't rise above mediocrity! Fforde manages to reduce Jane Eyre and Edward Rochester to melodramatic cardboard cutouts. (If I got ahold of a machine that allowed me to travel into books, you would find me organizing a carpet bombing of the England of the Thursday Next series with every decent modernist and postmodernist work ever written. A little Mrs. Dalloway Shock and Awe. I know we would be treated as liberators!)

I have to admit I am a bit surprised by my visceral reaction to what should be such a fun piece of bibliophilic fluff. Heck, I think I got more laughs out of Angels and Demons than I did The Eyre Affair. I think Fforde is just not for me.

163CarlosMcRey
Jul 8, 2009, 2:16 am

Book Started: Beyond the Pale
Category: Lighter Fare

I'm going to try to take it a little bit easier this month, so it'll be more fluffier works, such as Lighter Fare and some of the Templar novels. As for this book, well, I sort of wound up inheriting it from an ex-girlfriend. A little reminiscent of Crumb in its twisted stories and art.

Book Started: The Templar Legacy
Category: Thugs n' Templars

I don't really know much about Steve Berry, though it appears he has several books out. Still, Templars, you know, so I'm hoping it's fun without insulting my intelligence. So far (just the intro), Berry's take on the Templars is far more accurate than Dan Brown's.

164CarlosMcRey
Jul 8, 2009, 9:11 pm

Update on Rant:

I've heard some people refer to Chuck Palahniuk as this generation's Vonnegut. Personally, I'd say it's too early to call but I can see some of the parallels. One really big difference, though: Vonnegut writes like on old man, like someone weary beyond his years and who has seen and known too much not to see the sadness behind the most hilarious antics. Palahniuk OTO writes like an adolescent, fascinated by bodily fluids, farts, genitalia and pretty much anything that qualifies as a gross-out.

In Rant, after some odd erection-based conspiracy by a group of high school boys, the school board bribes the protag into leaving high school by offering him $10,000, a 4.0 average, and a letter in every sport. You gotta love how easily The Man folds in Palahniuk's works. I would think the Walt Disney corporation in the Palahniukverse is on the edge of bankruptcy from having to make too many out-of-court settlements. Here's my imagined scenario for why that is:

Disney Attorney: I am serving you with a cease-and-desist order. You are expressly forbidden to create, show or distribute any further works involving the character of Mickey Mouse or any reasonable facsimile thereof involving in sexual acts with farm machinery.

Taylor Dryden: Well, you're going to have to pay me $10 million dollars to stop.

DA: Mr. Dryden, I'm not sure if you're aware of the situation. You are to stop as of right now. This is not a negotiation.

TD: Well, if you don't pay me, I will take all remaining copies of my Mickey Mouse themed porno and anonymously mail them to elementary schools around the country.

DA: What, no you can't do that. Children all across the nation will be robbed of their innocent enjoyment of Mickey Mouse. Whenever they go to Disneyland or Walt Disney World, all they'll be able to think of is tractor sex. Please don't do that.

TD: Then fork over the ten million dollars.

DA: Okay, but you can't tell any of your fellow subversives how easy we are to blackmail.

TD: Uh, whatever, dude.

Palahniuk's fiction isn't really subversive. It's wish-fulfillment for people who think of themselves as subversive.

165CarlosMcRey
Editado: Jul 9, 2009, 7:54 pm

51. The Double by Fyodor Dostoevsky - finished 7/8/09

This was very reminiscent of The Trial in that involves a protagonist who find himself the target of a mysterious threat that slowly causes his life to unravel. The victim here is Yakov Petrovich Goyaldkin. Goyaldkin struck me as kind of nutty right off the bat, so I didn't find his plight all that suspenseful. It seemed that even without the double running around, he probably would have found himself ruined and in a sanitarium before too long.

As for the double, a person who bears an uncanny resemblance to Goyaldkin and even claims to have the same name, I wasn't really sure what to make of him. There were moments where I thought the novel would slide off into Fight Club/A Scanner Darkly territory and reveal that the double is in fact just that port of Goyaldkin's behavior which he hides from himself.

As for the style, well, it's always tricky to judge the style of translated works, especially for authors with a very unique voice. So, I can't say if Dostoevsky or the translator is to blame, but I found it a little difficult going. Some of that seemed intentional, since the way Goyaldkin talks seemed to reflect mental processes gone awry. Overall, I found it tricky to get into and stick with.

I won't be giving up on Dostoevsky, especially since the volume includes Notes from the Underground and The Eternal Husband. But I'll probably get to those after this challeneg is over.

166CarlosMcRey
Jul 10, 2009, 1:07 am

Another thought on The Eyre Affair:

I should probably stop beating up on this book, but I have to admit it's given me a new appreciation for Douglas Adams. I've decided this after scanning several reviews which compare Fforde to Adams. Douglas Adams may not have been Ernest Hemingway, but there's no way Fforde has half of the stylistic chops that Adams did. I haven't read Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy for years, possibly going on a decade, and there are lines that I still fondly remember. Hitchhiker's may have been full of absurdities, randomness and throw away gags, but it's Adams unique way of presenting it all that makes it so brilliant. For a brief experiment, let's compare a line from Hitchhiker's with one from Fforde:

Hitchhiker's: "...they hung in the air, exactly the way bricks don't."

Eyre Affair: "My father had a face that could stop a clock. I don't mean that he was ugly or anything, it was a phrase the ChronoGuard used to describe someone who had the power to reduce time to an ultra-slow trickle."

Now, I have to admit I liked Fforde's line. It's funny, sort of surreal and throws you straight into the story's twisted sci-fi conventions. But if you compare it to Adams, it just pales. I'm not going to go into detail analyzing the Hitchhiker's quote here, except to say that in a mere ten words Adams has succeeded in being evocative, eerie, memorable and very funny. Heck, I'd dare anyone who would compare Fforde to Adams to find me one line in all of The Eyre Affair that even comes close.

Which gets me to another point: style. Style was one of those things that I used to not think much about. I have to admit I used to believe a preoccupation with style was the sign of people who took literature too seriously, such as academics and snobs, or basically anybody who insists on calling it "literature." The way I saw it, a book just needed interesting characters, a good plot, some interesting ideas, and fixating over the prettiness of the words was sort of pointless.

But the more I read, the greater respect I've developed for the concept of style. Far from being about the "prettiness of the words," style is really integral to fiction. For one, it's the cement that holds everything else together, helping to create a mental space which facilitates suspension of disbelief. And the style will reflect many of the other elements in the book. (Dan Brown doesn't just have all the style of a wet ham; he also has no concept of how to tell a story beyond plugging in elements into his template.) Style doesn't necessarily need to call attention to itself, but it's presence makes a huge difference in just how powerful a work of fiction will be--how sad the tragedies, how funny the jokes, how horrifying the monsters.

167CarlosMcRey
Jul 11, 2009, 1:15 am

Update on The Templar Legacy:

As much as I may make fun of thrillers, or at least Angels and Demons, I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with a genre that emphasizes high concepts, sympathetic leads, obvious villains, suspense and lots of action. I'm just flummoxed by authors who think if you just have all those elements, no matter how lazilly developed, in the same book, they've somehow achieved something worth reading.

Now, Steve Berry probably isn't going to be showing up in an American Lit class anytime soon, but he writes a pretty fun novel. He appears to have done actual research--at least enough to fool an amateur like me. His characters may not be exactly three-dimensional, but the heroes are likeable though realistically flawed and the villains suitably menacing without being the worst cartoon stereotypes. And the language, though sometimes a little awkward, is free of crimes against English such as "symbologists."

Most pleasant of all, he manages to surprise me, such as in a scene between the heroes and an obnoxious French bookseller, which ended in a way I was not expecting it to.

If it keeps being as fun and intelligent as it has been so far, I may be picking up the other books in the series.

168CarlosMcRey
Editado: Jul 11, 2009, 1:45 am


52. Beyond the Pale: Krazed Komics and Stories by Kim Deitch - finished 7/9/09

Since I know so very little about the whole underground comics movement that started in the '60s, I tend to associate it all with Robert Crumb. I thought the comics in here would be pretty Crumb-like when I first started reading it. Now, I don't know that much about Crumb either, but I do get the impression there's a strange sexual perversity to his work, one which was mostly missing from Deitch's work.

The comics in here turned out to be pretty entertaining. There were certain recurring characters, several of which appear to spend quite a bit of time in madhouses, including a man with an imaginary friend and a psychic detective. Some of the stories are pretty random, but some of them are funny little mysteries, ghost stories or bizarre science-fiction tales. Not what I expected, but pretty fun.

169CarlosMcRey
Jul 15, 2009, 8:08 pm


53. The Templar Legacy by Steve Berry - finished 7/13/09

I get the impression this is the sort of book that Da Vinci Code would have been if it were written by someone who respected his readers. The novel is about Cotton Malone, an ex-intelligence agent, who gets involved in a hunt for a treasure that somehow has been set into action by the dead husband of his former boss.

The story takes them from Copenhagen to Southern France, in search of a Templar treasure which is believed to include a very special item. At the same time, it turns out that the quest for the treasure has come to play a role in an internal Templar power struggle, with one faction willing to resort to unscrupulous means to locate the treasure.

So, there's lots of hunting for clues in old documents and religious works of art, quite a bit of having to escape from not-so-nice people, some violence, some colorful characters, religious revelations. Seriously, if you're looking for a frivolous story about Templar secrets, you could definitely do worse.

Incidentally, I may make an adjustment to this category. I find myself with absolutely no motivation to read Ramaseeana, partially because of the format. I may drop it and expand the Templar section by adding Raymond Khoury's The Last Templar.

170CarlosMcRey
Jul 16, 2009, 1:55 am

Book Started: Amberes
Category: Orientales y Otros Americanos
Nationality: Chileno

I knew I wanted to include Bolaño in my reading this year. I was orginally considering 2666 but decided against it for a variety of reasons. (Length, no Spanish-language copy available at my library, trying to avoid paying full price for books...) So, I decided to seek out one of the shorter novels (ie. anything not-2666). This one showed up on my latest library search, and a Wikipedia search turned up that it's the first of Bolaño's novels and prefigures a lot of his later works. I figured it was as good a place as any to start.

So far, it's rather disjointed. Actually, it's very disjointed and makes The Savage Detectives look like, well, I'm not sure what... Some other, non-disjointed writer. I'm already thinking there's parts I'm definitely going to have to re-read. Thankfully, it's short. Not complaining here, just surprised by how tricky such a short novel could be.

Book Started: Fantasmas: Supernatural Stories
Category: Obscure Works
Shared With: 6

I picked up this book in a library book sale. It looked pretty intriguing, and the theme of supernatural tales arising from a specific milleu (and one that may be considered outside the bounds of my usual fantastic reading) certainly appealed to me. Another aspect that appealed to me was the idea of fiction based in a certain border realm, here the American Southwest and the melding of Mexican and American culture. The introduction takes pains to distinguish the stories from more traditional ghost stories on one hand and magical realism on the other hand, though I suspect the distinction really cannot be drawn so sharply. (More borderlands...)

Despite the title (Spanish for "ghosts"), there aren't really any ghosts so far in the collection. (Although one could say the same about Aickman.) I'm not sure if it's the themes or just the way the stories are written, but none of the stories have really hooked me so far. There are some interesting ideas or approaches, and often an incorporation of a Southwestern Spanglish into the narrative. Anyway, I hope I get a little more into them, perhaps find some gems, before long.

171CarlosMcRey
Jul 17, 2009, 10:53 pm


54. Amberes by Roberto Bolaño - finished 7/17/09

(I find it sort of ironic that I originally intended to read Bolaño's most recent and longest work and instead ended up reading what is arguably his first and shortest novel.)

As for the novel itself, I'm tempted to say that whatever its failings, it seems like a pretty potent announcement of the themes and obsessions that would be brought to fruition in the later stories and novels. However, that would be a bit of a cop-out, since novels and stories really need to stand on their own, not as signposts to something else. And I have to admit that as a novel, Amberes is kind of a mixed bag.

The biggest obstacle to appreciation/understanding here is that the novel is very disjointed. It feels almost collage-like and left me wondering if Bolaño was a fan of William Burroughs.

(If you've never read Burroughs, think of it this way: Do you find the films of David Lynch overly linear? If you answered yes, then Burroughs and Amberes might be up your alley.)

I suspect I did miss quite a bit due to my relatively poor Spanish, but even in English, I imagine this novel would feel like a something of a disparate parts that have been thrown together. I honestly am not even sure what the story is about, except for a guy who works in a campground, movies being projected on a sheet, people who someone remembers, sex, and the attempt to capture it all in writing.

Whatever its flaws, there are some very stunning passages, haunting images, and a sense of some of the same themes that Bolaño would develop more later (the nature of violence, the role of fiction, the impermanence of life).

So, was I sorry I read it? Definitely not. Would I recommend it? That depends--how do you feel about Mulholland Drive?

172CarlosMcRey
Jul 18, 2009, 1:57 am

Update on Rant:

It struck me today that even though the novel is structured as a biography of Buster "Rant" Casey, I feel a little confused as to why anybody felt any particular interest in writing a biography of this person. Rant has these out-sized personality traits that are pretty extreme (liked being bit by spiders and other varmints as a kid; can tell everything about a person from smelling or, um, tasting them; found a secret stash of antique coins that has turned him into a stealth millionaire) but I can't really think of much else about his personality. He seems more like a collection of fictional ideas than an actual human being.

(Of course, some biographic subjects can be hard to pin down.)

I've had this problem before with Palahniuk protagonists, such as Victor Mancini of Choke who I think became a sex addict in order to develop a personality. I imagine that Palahniuk is intentionally crafting his characters in broad strokes to increase the absurdity, but it seems to make it harder to feel anything like sympathy for these caricatures.

Another frequent feature of Palahniuk's fiction--I'm not sure what you'd call it, "data dumping" perhaps. Some of his characters have a tendency to go on and on about the "facts" about some particular subject. Since this is ostensibly a biography and that kind of factual basis can be important, it should be a little less artificial, but I have to admit it still struck me as kind of depressing.

Now, while going on endlessly about a particular subject can be pretty dreary, I think it can actually be a pretty potent technique when used properly. I was really impressed with the way an obsessive approach to the central subject matter helped structure and drive both Moby Dick and House of Leaves. (Their respective matter being, I think, whaling and haunted houses.)

What I noticed about Palahniuk's use of it is that the facts often seem to be fixed, Cheney-like around a central conclusion. So, for example, one of the themes of Diary is how art comes from pain, so we get endless passages about this painter suffering from that disease or this work of art created while so-and-so was recovering and/or succumbing to such-and-such.

The factual obsessiveness in Dick and House suggest an author in full-on exploration mode, trying to learn all he can about a subject so as to get some handle on it. (An impossible task, of course, and perhaps that tension is part of what makes it interesting.) Palahniuk's approach OTH can feel a bit like being stuck with someone who has already come to a conclusion and is trying to beat you into submission with the shear quantity of data that he has amassed. (Imagine a JFK conspiracy theorist going into great detail about all the mysterious, or "mysterious," deaths surrounding the assassination.)

I don't think it's an inherently bad technique, but it can often feel a bit claustrophobic.

173CarlosMcRey
Jul 22, 2009, 2:38 am


55. Fantasmas: Supernatural Stories by Mexican American Writers - finished 7/20/09

Anthologies are usually something of a mixed bag, but I think this one was pretty good overall. It took me a few stories to get into it, in part because I was trying to suss out exactly where cuentos de fantasma fit into the spectrum of weird fiction. The first couple stories especially seemed to have some intriguing concepts that seemed like they could have easily slipped into horror story mode but then didn't.

The impression I get is that cuentos de fantasma are sort of a loose category and represent a certain intersection between folk tale, urban legend and parable. Some of them have a definite moral angle, though these are modern enough that it's not a straightforwardly religious one. There's also an element of fault lines particular the U.S.-Mexico border: poverty, class, differences of gender and race, north and south.

As with anthologies, there are some clunkers. One in particular struck me as a pretty straightforward horror story without even much of a Mexican-American angle to it. But overall, an interesting variety of stories.

174CarlosMcRey
Jul 22, 2009, 3:08 am

Book Started: The Ceremonies
Category: Queer (NBSO) Horror - Goths and Weirdos

T. E. D. Klein was one of those writers I encountered while exploring Cthulhu Mythos fiction that really seemed to stand out, the sort that made me think I'd seek out his work even in non-Cthulhu contexts. Dark Gods, his collection of short works, while certainly reflecting Lovecraftian influence, was a solid collection reflecting Klein's own style.

So, my hopes are high going into this one, and I have to admit, so far it's a little slow. It feels like there's a lot of throat-clearing, give-the-background sort of information going on. It's not bad, but it's not particularly engaging either. I'm reminded of Borges comment: "Unlike the novel, a short story may be, for all purposes, essential."

I don't necessarily agree with that, but when it comes to horror, I'm starting to find there's a difference between novels that are good and those that are compelling. Well, there's still hope. Off Season started out sort of conventionally, then managed to shift gears into seriously compelling, so I don't doubt Klein can do it, too.

175CarlosMcRey
Jul 24, 2009, 2:24 am

Update on Rant:

Lee Harvey Oswald. James Earl Ray. Sirhan Sirhan. John Wilkes Booth.

One of these things is not like the others. One of these things does not belong...

And, no, it's not Mr. Sirhan's lack of a middle name that sets him apart. While the official record states that Oswald, Ray and Sirhan acted alone, it's common knowledge that Booth really was part of a conspiracy. (As in, co-conspirators were tried and executed.)

I'm actually enjoying Rant so far, but I swear sometimes I wonder if Palahniuk is in some sort of competition with Dan Brown over who can slip more ludicrously incorrect facts past their unsuspecting readers. Perhaps that's one of those factors that makes me roll my eyes when encountering the Palahniuk-is-a-genius! types.

It did get me wondering if there are any contrarian conspiracy buffs who claim that Booth really did act alone, but that the North made up the conspiracy (and put on show trials of "co-conspirators") to make the South look bad.

Also, it's possible that Rant takes place in an alternate universe where Andrew Johnson was behind the Lincoln assassination, so all evidence of non-Booth participants has been suppressed.

Update on The Ceremonies:

OK, I take it back. The novel does take a while to get started, but once it does it's really engrossing. I sat down to read it today, and when I got to a good stopping point, I looked up and realized two hours had somehow passed.

The beginning did remind me of one pet peeve when it comes to contemporary Gothic/horror works: character bios. I get the idea that we're supposed to have some investment in the character, but it often strikes me as a rather artificial technique. It's far more interesting to see character revealed in action, including the way a character communicates, than a rundown of their life. (Probably falls under show, don't tell.)

176CarlosMcRey
Jul 27, 2009, 2:16 am


56. The Ceremonies by T.E.D. Klein - finished 7/24/09

Like some proverbial freight train of doom, The Ceremonies takes its time getting getting up to speed, but once it does it may be slow but there's no denying the terrifying momentum behind the blasted thing. Which is an overwrought way of saying that despite the slow start, the build-up and finale to the novel more than made up for it.

The Ceremonies is almost post-modern in the way it riffs off of previous works to tell its own tale of occult rituals and things from beyond the stars that threaten humanity. One of the principal characters is spending his summer in an isolated community to research the history of gothic/weird/horror fiction only to find himself at ground zero for the efforts of an ancient creature to bring about its own return. While that sort of irony is usually better at being scary, Klein manages to make that irony part of the tension of the novel.


57. Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey by Chuck Palahniuk - finished 7/24/09

Despite what criticisms I've had of Palahniuk, I really ended up enjoying Rant and think it may be one of his better novels. He covers some of the same themes he's been drawn to in previous works such as identity and doubles (Fight Club), contagion (Lullaby) and the eternal return (Diary). I'm not always impressed with the way Palahniuk handles heavy themes, but there's a certain fleetness or playfulness with the intercutting of narrative voices that keeps it all pretty lively. I never really felt any interest in Rant Casey as a human being, but certainly found all the stuff happening around him pretty engaging.

177CarlosMcRey
Jul 27, 2009, 2:35 am

Book Started: The Master and Margarita
Category: Eastern European Authors
Nationality: Russian

I picked this up at a library book sale where it had been filed for some reason in their Horror section. It was a pleasant surprise, especially as I had gotten interested in the book after seeing it mentioned on LT! Really enjoying it so far, though still sometimes get kind of confused with those Russian names.

178CarlosMcRey
Jul 30, 2009, 8:38 pm


58. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov - finished 7/28/09

Well, the Devil went down to Moscow, he was looking to host a ball.
He came with his crew, there was so much to do, and so many saps to enthrall.

Well, I'd go on, but I haven't written a parody song since high school. Anyway, very fun book in which the devil and several of his most colorful minions make their way to Moscow. Here he predicts the death of one writer, drives several people to madness, puts on a really outrageous show which concludes with dozens of society types wandering the streets of Moscow in various states of undress, and also tells us what really happened between Jesus and Pontius Pilate.

I have to admit that while I think some of the satire here is clear (it's hard not to feel a little chill when the narrator mentions people disappearing), I do get the feeling that I'm missing some of the subtext, such as the connection of the Pilate story with the rest of the action. So, it will merit a reread down the road.

On a side note, the novel is mentioned along with Ehrman's The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot in this New Yorker piece which I found pretty interesting.

179CarlosMcRey
Jul 31, 2009, 3:49 am

Book Started: Brethren
Category: Thugs n' Templars

Perhaps because of how often they show up in secret society/conspiracy plots, the idea of a novel about the Templars set during the Crusades seems sort of refreshing. I have to admit, although I first cracked it open a couple of days ago, so far I've only gotten through the first chapter. This may be due to having things to do and on my mind, but it's also that the book hasn't really gripped me yet. It starts with a battle scene between Mamaluks and Mongols, which was probably full of historical detail yet sometimes felt a little flat, like reading one of those old TSR AD&D novels I was into in high school.

Book Started: Selections from Dreamsongs 2
Category: Audiobooks (Extra Credit)

I've heard enough good things about George R. R. Martin that I was pretty intrigued when I spotted this at the library. I like his intro so far about the 60s and 70s history of fantasy vis-a-vis SF. The first story is intriguing so far.

180ivyd
Jul 31, 2009, 12:42 pm

re #178: Thanks for the link to the New Yorker article. I found it very interesting.

I read The Master and Margarita in June, and, although I enjoyed the story, I felt that I was missing allusions and symbols on nearly every page. I didn't really know what to make of the Pilate story, either -- especially since Bulgakov died in 1940, before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scolls, Nag Hammadi, etc.

181avatiakh
Jul 31, 2009, 6:52 pm

I'm almost through reading The Master and the Margarita and must admit that while I've enjoyed it I feel that I'm also missing out on some of the deeper meaning in the novel. I will read some commentary on the book once I finish.
Interesting comments you've made on The Eyre Affair, I enjoy Fforde's books in a silly sort of way, haven't read The Hitchhikers Guide but feel now that I finally should. I thought that it started out as a radio script rather than a book which is one of the reasons I've never picked it up.

182CarlosMcRey
Ago 3, 2009, 2:55 am

The Master and Margarita would totally be worth finding some background/criticism on. I haven't really checked into whether the local library has any works that might feature said commentary. (I did see there's something of the sort available on Amazon, but my book budget is meager so it wouldn't be worthwhile.)

As for The Eyre Affair, I do wonder if I'm being a bit of a killjoy, since it seems to be pretty widely enjoyed. (And I'd heard so many good things about it.) I might check out the next one in the series via audiobook. (Maybe delivery is important.)

I'm also feeling as if I should really reread The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, though with the fear that I'll no longer find it all that funny. Well, the first two or three books. Even as an adolescent, I thought there was a bit of a drop-off with So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish.

I think I can be rather picky when it comes to fiction, getting perhaps unfairly irritated at certain elements. For example, I felt a bit deflated when I realized that the protagonist for Brethren is a 13-year-old Templar in training by the name of Will Campbell, who has all the attributes you'd expect of this sort of character: intelligent, plucky, with a penchant for breaking the rules for well-meaning reasons, also with an elder figure who is there to gently guide him to adulthood. It's the sort of Joseph Campbell 101 hero whose presence should be something of a comfort, but who strikes me as being like so many other characters in medieval/fantasy works that it comes off as unoriginal.

183eairo
Editado: Ago 3, 2009, 1:36 pm

Here is a first-aid kit of background/supplementary material for The Master and Margarita:

Bulgakov's Master and Margarita

I read it years ago, and even though I guess living in the neighbor of the Soviet Union helped a bit, I am sure I was also overwhelmed by the book's levels and layers of satire.

One extra source of both fun and wonder was that in the (Finnish) edition I read the sections removed (by the cencors) from the original Soviet editions were marked. More whats and whys trying guess the reasons for cencorship.

About the Jesus & Pilate story. One explanation I've read somewhere is that it was--apart from being the novel the Master had written, and his source of trouble--in its realism and lack of mysticism, an instrument of contrast to the atheistic Soviet society full of wonders and mysteries provided partly but not only by Woland.

184avatiakh
Ago 3, 2009, 4:09 pm

#183 Thanks for that link - I've had a quick look and will be back for more indepth reading. I read another review that recommended particular translations of the novel and I read the Pevear translation which didn't rate highly with the reviewer. I hadn't done my background reading on the author and only now realise that it was written in 1930s but first published in 1966. A bit like the psychologist Vygotsky who wrote all his work in the 1920s but when published in the west in the 1970s revolutionised the whole field of early education and child development.

Carlos - I have finally got a copy of The Street of Crocodiles which you read back in January.

185ivyd
Ago 3, 2009, 4:38 pm

re #183:

Thanks, eairo! It's a fascinating site!

186CarlosMcRey
Ago 7, 2009, 6:35 pm

Thanks, eario. I've checked it out, and it looks pretty helpful. I also like some of the illustrations it links to.

avatiakh - Cool, I hope you like it. He's a very unique author.

187CarlosMcRey
Ago 8, 2009, 1:45 am

Book Started: Tales of the Knights Templar
Category: Thugs n' Templars

Well, I've given up on Ramaseeana for the moment. Perhaps when I have an e-book reader and can transfer it to a more readable format. As is, it's not exactly an entertaining read at a moment where I feel like I have many other things to distract me.

So, I've added Tales, which I recently found, which I've only read the first couple stories of. Not bad so far, the editor introduces each of the stories with some background.

Book Started: The Manuscript Found in Saragossa
Category: Eastern European Authors
Nationality: Polish

Jan Potocki seems to have been something of a colorful character--explorer, soldier, linguist, Egyptologist, and writer. Manuscript is a fascinating read--one of those old Gothic--story within a story within a story, pirates, banditti, ghosts, strange wanderers, fake books, etc.--sort of yarns that I have to admit that I have a certain weakness for. (See also Melmoth the Wanderer) The narrative is allegedly a book discovered by a French soldier in a house in Spain containing the first-hand accounts of a Spanish soldier and his very peculiar adventures.

Thanks, VisibleGhost, for suggesting it.

188CarlosMcRey
Ago 12, 2009, 2:15 am


59. Brethren: An Epic Adventure of the Knights Templar by Robyn Young - finished 8/11/09

Whatever it's flaws, Brethren ended up being quite a bit of fun once I got into it. There's a good mix of intrigue, politics and action--combined with some interesting (and well described) locations--which are more than enough to make for an interesting adventure tale. As for the flaws, well, my biggest gripe would be that it seems to fall back on a lot of the sort of clichés that occur in popular medieval/fantasy fiction. The story never seemed like something that could have happened. Then again, when it comes to this sort of material, I tend to prefer a somewhat more "difficult" approach, so YMMV. (Let's just say I consider The Name of the Rose, with its untranslated Latin and everything, to be the gold standard.)

The story is centered on Will Campbell, a young sergeant in the Templars, who hopes to become a knight someday, in part so that he can reconcile with his father who is fighting in the Holy Land. In the meantime, the Mamluk General Baybars has decided he wants to drive all the Christians from same, and some intrigue gets underway when someone steals a secret Templar book. The narrative encompasses close to ten years, multiple locations and several historical figures.

189eairo
Ago 12, 2009, 5:35 am

Your last post reminds me of two things worth checking. I see your Templars category is full already but here they are still:

Jan Guillou's Arn trilogy--The Road to Jerusalem, The Knight Templar and The Kingdom at the End of the Road--is a nice and easy read filled with both adventure and historical information (some of which has been questioned elsewhere, but nevermind that :). It may suffer a little from the use of the clichés you mention above, but at least it offers a different background setting to the standard historical fiction.

Secondly, An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears seems to be often compared with The Name of the Rose, and I can see why: this is a great historical mystery which is big, funny and serious at once.

190avatiakh
Ago 12, 2009, 4:06 pm

I'll second the recommendation of An Instance of the Fingerpost, loved it.

191CarlosMcRey
Editado: Ago 21, 2009, 10:52 am

Thanks for the recommendations, eairo. I followed your reading of An Instance of the Fingerpost and thought it sounded pretty fascinating.

I don't know about any more Templar books for the rest of the year, but it depends on when I finish up and how much time I devote to reading over the last few months. I've actually got a couple of Templar-themed "reads" (actually audiobooks) planned above and beyond what's in the category. One is Raymond Khoury's The Last Templar and the other is Da Vinci Code. Yes, I am a masochist. Actually, you have to love the plot synopsis on the back:

The menacing secret Catholic organization known as Opus Dei has struck! The elderly curator of the Louvre has been found dead inside the museum, surrounded by eldritch ciphers in invisible ink! Ooh, eldritch ciphers, or more accurately anagrams. Does that make horoscopes eldritch prophecies, since the horoscopes are usually next to the anagrams in the newspaper? It is up to Harvard semiotician Robert Langdon and his French cryptologist partner Sophie Neveu to decode the ciphers, and get to the bottom of an ever-widening myster. Ha! Even the probably over-worked publisher's assistant tasked with writing this realizes "symbologist" is just a stupid word! They discover the late curator was the gatekeeper of the "Priory of Sion," a secret society whose members included Leonardo da Vinci, and that he sacrificed his life to protect a vastly important ancient religious relic from Opus Dei. Whoa, slow down there, what's with all the adjectives? If Langdon and Neveu do not decipher the clues in time, Opus Dei will get its hands on the relic, and havoc will be wrought!

192CarlosMcRey
Editado: Ago 21, 2009, 10:53 am


60. The Manuscript Found in Saragossa by Jan Potocki - finished 8/19/09

The book alleges to be a found Spanish manuscript that the discoverer (a French soldier) has had translated into French. The manuscript relates the adventures of Alphonse, a soldier in the Walloon guards, and his adventures in a particular region of Spain, as he meets bandits, Muslims, Cabbalist Jews, a math genius and several other interesting characters, all of whom have their stories to tell. These stories sometimes involve stories within stories and even stories within stories within stories, in a feat that can sometimes be sort of dizzying, if not a bit confusing. (One is tempted to say, as with The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman manages to be postmodern before there was any modernism of which to be post.)

The individual stories (and the narrative overall) vary a bit in style, going from picaresque to gothic and back, so some sections are pretty funny, some rather spooky. As with Melmoth the Wanderer (one of my favorite classic Gothics), this book took me a long time to get through, but it's freaky twistiness ended up being really engrossing.

193CarlosMcRey
Ago 21, 2009, 11:04 am

Book Started: El Lenguaje de Buenos Aires
Category: Obscure Works
Shared With: 8

I'm in Buenos Aires right now, so it's probably the best time to read the book. I actually find Borges' nonfiction a little opaque when compared with his fiction, though still pretty thought-provoking. (I'm tempted to say it's foolish to say there's a real distinction between Borges' fiction and his nonfiction, but as much as he blurs the line, most of his work clearly falls into one or the other.)

The book is a collection of essays about the language of Argentina, especially Buenos Aires. The first one regards Borges' ideas on the sort of language that Argentine authors should use. He argues against both an artificial attempt to mimic street language through the (over)use of slang vocabulary and a devotion to simply using classical Spanish as the Spanish do. It's an interesting and subtle essay, and one which makes me wonder to what extent Borges' own peculiar sense of humor should be considered as representatively Argentine. (A case he almost seems to be making implicitly.)

194CarlosMcRey
Ago 24, 2009, 11:08 pm

Book Started: El delirio de Turing
Category: Orientales y otros americanos
Nationality: Boliviano

To start with, the first epigraph is from Borges' "The Library of Babel." This is Borges' birthday, and, being in Buenos Aires, I took the opportunity to visit a couple of important sites, including a bookstore he used to frequent and the old Biblioteca Nacional. This doesn't have anything to do with the book, except, well, I felt like sharing my mini-pilgrimage.

Just read the first chapter so far. Interesting, a bit reminiscent of William Gibson or Neal Stephenson (also quoted in epigraph). The first chapter is in second person, which is a hard case to pull off, so we'll see how it goes.

195CarlosMcRey
Ago 25, 2009, 7:22 pm


61. El lenguaje de Buenos Aires by Jorge Luis Borges - finished 08/25/09

Fun little book about the language of Buenos Aires. Borges has three essays, the one mentioned above, another in which he refutes a book by Americo Castro in which he criticizes rioplatense Spanish, and one about the names on wagons. The other three essays, from Jose Clemente, are more specifically about the linguistic background of Buenos Aires language, and the way it varies by neighborhood.


62. Tales of the Knights Templar by Katherine Kurtz - finished 08/25/09

Though none of the stories blew me away, this was a pretty fun combination of Templar history and short fictions. My favorite of the bunch was definitely "Stealing God" by Debra Doyle and James Macdonald, which had sort of a fun hardboiled adventure take on Templar conspiracies. I think it does a pretty good job of looking at the Templar legend from different angles and getting into what contributes to their enduring appeal as subjects of fiction, non-fiction, and mixtures thereof.

196CarlosMcRey
Editado: Ago 27, 2009, 12:35 pm

Random thought about The Eyre Affair and Lamb:

It's pretty clear that location, reading material and time of year have had me posting on Borges lately. Not surprisingly, I've been thinking about Borges quite a bit as well, among other things in relation to The Eyre Affair. I've thought a bit about whether it would be fair to label it as sub-Borgesian, which encapsulates a response I have to works which seem very reminiscent of Borges and the themes he explored yet leave me thinking, "Dude, WWBD?" (with WWBD = What Would Borges Do?) or to put it differently, "Why do I feel there's a much subtler, funnier, and more interesting way this subject could be handled?"

So, take for example one of the crimes that the Big Bad plans on commiting: the kidnapping and murder from the character of Martin Chuzzlewit from the original manuscript of Martin Chuzzlewit. Since that will affect all printings of Chuzzlewit, it is taken as pretty much a given that the resulting book will probably just be a few pages. But why is it necessarily so? It's easy to imagine the fun that Borges would have with such a concept, the plays on presence and absence, on the memory of a character, on the way his disappearance affects the characters around him. (Heck, Rant, constructs a whole book around a character who we never meet directly.) Fforde's take on things serves the defeat-evil-genius plot, but is actually pretty unimaginative.*

Which leads me to another observation on Eyre: as inventive as Eyre may be with names, literary subcultures and spec ops departments, it's painfully unoriginal when it comes to its plot arcs. Said plot arcs seem to be mainly a) defeat evil genius, b) settle down with love of main character's life and c) stop the Crimean War. Fforde didn't seem to do anything really interesting with any of these plots. Plot c is almost an afterthought, something that allows the heroine to look heroic without really doing much of anything. Plot b also feels like a bit of an afterthought, with Fforde not creating any real sense of chemistry or attraction between the two characters. Plot a is a little more interesting, but I found it was rendered a little boring by the arbitrariness of Acheron Hades. (As with a lot of the characters, his name is the most interesting thing about him.) He's wicked for wickedness sake and has some vampire-like powers, but nothing particularly interesting is done with them. The idea of a villain who is wicked just for the hell of it sounds interesting, but what it really comes down to is that his schemes come off as pretty pointless.

So, despite how inventive Fforde gets with names, world building or funky inventions, Eyre was structurally unimaginative. I'm reminded a bit of the new Star Wars movies, where Lucas would surround a scene of characters trading bad dialogue with lots of shiny, moving imagery (often robots), as if to distract us from how dull what we were watching really was.

And speaking of uninventive, I couldn't help think that there was a bit of a parallel with Christopher Moore's Lamb. Now, Lamb was pretty funny overall, but as I mentioned previously, I thought it lost a lot of steam in the last quarter or so. If I had to pick a turning point, it's when Biff boils down Jesus' ministry into bullet points. Though it's couched in Biff's wiseass Jewish guy terms, it's basically just a standard Protestant interpretation of the ministry of Jesus. (You have to believe that Jesus is the son of God and that he died for your sins, otherwise you go to hell. Or as Biff puts it, "...you're f@#ed.")

I happen to know enough about Christian thought to realize that this happens to be just one interpretation of Jesus' ministry, and a particularly American and Protestant one at that. I don't think it's a bad interpretation, but it isn't the only viable one. So, all Moore's inventiveness about Jesus' youth and his exposure to other religions/beliefs has led to him settling on a view of faith and salvation that happens to be exactly like that of the probable reader? Biff's translation of it into wiseguy Jewish terms only served to call attention to how un-daring the book was choosing to be.

Although I've said that I can't fault Moore for making the choice to fall on the side of an earnest, non-subversive interpretation of Jesus and his ministry, I'm wondering if I was a little too generous in doing so. Moore could have left out an explicit interpretation of Jesus' ministry, instead emphasizing the character and his actions while omitting any statement of what the ministry boils down to. (You know, the same approach taken by The New Testament.) That he chooses to do so with the sort of interpretation that a mainline Protestant will both recognize and be completely comfortable with strikes me as a bit of a disappointment the more I think about it.

Man, have I been really negative this year? I really should come up with a long, rambling rant on something I really liked of the reading so far. I'm going to plead beef hangover on this one. I'm usually not a big beef eater, but I had a quarter of an order of asado last night and woke up feeling a little crummy this morning.

* A similar sense of watching something sub-Borgesian infects the Richard III Horror Show scene. One of Borges early short stories, "Pierre Menard, author of the Quixote" is about an author who was trying to write Don Quixote all over again. Among other themes, it's a wonderful riff on the way context changes the way we perceive a work of art. It's hard to imagine Borges not stopping to consider how camping up a production of Richard III and repeating it weekly fundamentally changes the experience.

I know I've bashed this scene a lot, and on reflection I can see what the appeal of it is. Shakespeare's works have for a long time been presented with a sort of reverence and solemnity that makes them seem like dull, obligatory works instead of the rip-roaring crowd pleasers they were intended to be. Eyre tries to recapture some of that sense of them as popular entertainment. But I still think Eyre's version of Richard III is quite a different beast than the original and am sort of befuddled by the characters' inability to realize it.

197CarlosMcRey
Ago 29, 2009, 12:11 am

Book Started: Titus Groan
Category: Queer (NBSO) Horror: Goths and Weirdos

Just started the first chapter today. Been meaning to read this one for a while--don't remember where I first heard of it--but it's apparently been a big influence on the New Weird writers. It combines elements of gothic and fantasy fiction. The writing style is particularly interesting in ways I'm not quite sure how to describe. I will say this much, it's the sort of style that is peculiar enough that you have to be on the right wavelength to get into it, but when you do, it's awesome!

198CarlosMcRey
Editado: Set 4, 2009, 2:27 am


63. El delirio de Turing by Edmundo Paz Soldan - finished 9/3/09

Overall, I'd say the book lives up to the sort of William Gibson in Bolivia vibe you get from it. (Judging from some of the reviews, I'm guessing some people were expecting a more straightforward high-tech thriller.) I wouldn't call it brilliant, since it plays a bit like pastiche: little Gibson, little Borges, little Garcia Marquez, a little Phil Dick, etc. Also, I wasn't sure if all the various stylistic experimentation and plot lines quite added up.

To get a little more detaild, most of the action takes place during the waning days of the Montenegro administration. (I have to admit I don't know my Bolivian history here, but I think Montenegro is a stand-in for whoever it was that came before Evo Morales.) The adminstration has enacted many neo-liberal reforms, including the privatization of most utilities. Things come to a head when people get fed up enough with the multinational that runs the electric company that they start to consider action. Taking part in this is an underground group, led by a hacker named Kandinsky, which hopes to use the outrage to bring down the president.

Opposed to them is the government's security service, including the cryptography department which is named Camara Negra (meaning either Black Chamber or, I think, Black House) which is led by a former CIA employee by the name of Ramirez-Graham. Among his personnel is the old hand Saenz, who goes by the nickname Turing, and who is totally Old School. Also involved in the action (to different degrees) are Turing's wife and daughter, and a former judge who has been looking into the crimes commited by the Montenegro government when it was a dictatorship.

For some reason, Turing is the only character whose narrative is given in the second person. I have to admit I didn't find the use of 2nd person narrator too bad, but I'm not sure if it was really essential. All the other characters, save one, are narrated in third-person. That character, who is Turing's former boss, spends most of the book lying unconscious in a hospital bed, the apparent victim of some degenerative neurological disorder, the first symptoms of which were that he began to tell other people that he was immortal and had formerly incarnated into the body of basically every code maker and breaker who ever lived. That aspect, along with some moments of paranoia, is where the book reminded me most of Phillip K. Dick.

Anyway, that's sort of my rough break down of the book. Again, I thought it was pretty good, but would warn anyone not to expect anything like a normal thriller.

One more thing: I found it interesting with how appropriate the cyberpunk theme fit into the setting. In many ways a small, developing country is more like the setting for Neuromancer than the contemporary United States. That is you have the presence of a global popular culture, weak and corrupt governments, shadowy multinationals with a lot of weight to throw around, dramatic juxtapositions of wealth and poverty (as well as high and low technology).

199CarlosMcRey
Set 4, 2009, 10:50 am

Book Started: The Last Templar
Category: Audiobooks (Extra Credit)

Just started this a couple of days ago. Pretty fun, sometimes sort of silly, the writing is sometimes a bit flat and the action has some of that, OK, would you lke to buy the film rights now? sort of feeling, but not in a way that's kept me from getting caught up in the plot. Plus Khoury gets bonus points for a) quoting Eco saying you know a lunatic because they always get around to talking about the Templars and b) subtly referencing Dan Brown by mentioning how the theory that Jesus had kids has been used (not only) by popular novelists.

The opening action is that four men dressed up as Templar Knights stage a raid on the Metropolitan Museum on opening night of a big display of Vatican treasures. Among the items stolen is a two-rotor encryption machine, which seems to predate the invention of such machines by several hundred years. (More cryptography.) The FBI and hottie archaeologist Tess Chaykin investigate, only to find someone else seems to be one step ahead of them.

200CarlosMcRey
Editado: Set 6, 2009, 11:26 pm

Update on The Last Templar:

OK, this may be a bit of a spoiler so be warned. The goal of the daring robbery turns out to be the theft of a two-rotor encoding machine the Templars used to encrypt all of their communications. (The anachronism is acknowledged here.) I have to admit, I probably wouldn't know this if it wasn't for just reading Turing's Delirium, but the machine is basically just a fairly simple Enigma machine. (Enigma used three or, later on, four rotors.) Considering all the risks that the antagonist had to take to pull off the robbery, I was wondering if he wouldn't have been better off just hiring a couple of geeks to crack the code. Still, not sure about it, but a couple of web searches do show it's relatively easy to write a software program that will simulate an Enigma machine. Some particularly interesting information here: http://www.xat.nl/enigma/

Update to update: Did a little more reading, mostly on Wikipedia, related to the Enigma issue. I think a modern computer would have a pretty substantial advantage over technology that hasn't been cutting edge since the 1940s, but it appears that it would actually be pretty hard to crack without some idea of the structure of the coded messsages (language, type of communication) as well as some understanding of the internal workings of the machine.

201CarlosMcRey
Set 9, 2009, 6:42 pm

Update on The Last Templar and Titus Groan:

OK, I have to give Raymond Khoury props. Not only was my objection premature (there turns out to be too few samples for even the most powerful code-breaking software) but he manages to come up with an unexpected and plausible solution to the problem. I have to admit I'm enjoying this one quite a bit. Doesn't transcend the thriller template but does it pretty well.

Not much to say on Titus Groan except it's kind of awesome. I find myself really getting caught up in everything. It's sort of dark and twisted yet beneath the pseudo-Gothic tone, it delivers some moments of real emotional power. The same goes for the characters who manage to be both oddball grotesques and surprisingly captivating.

202CarlosMcRey
Set 12, 2009, 12:17 pm

Book Started: Los mejores cuentos de Rubén Darío
Category: Orientales y otros americanos
Nationality: Nicaragüense

I was originally going to read all of Darío's short stories for the challenge, but decided to go with this selection of his "best" short stories, though I must admit to ignorance as to the criteria. (The volume is missing any sort of prologue or story notes explaining the choice of stories.) Darío is regarded as the most important modernist poet of Latin America, having influenced many others, such as Leopoldo Lugones, Jorge Luis Borges, Pablo Neruda, etc. This is my first exposure to his work, and I've opted for short stories because I have a better grasp of them than I do poetry.

So far, I've only read the first story, titled "A las orillas del Rhin" ("On the Shores of the Rhine") is a tale of doomed love in medieval times. The setting (a crumbling castle) and time period evoke a certain gothic quality. I did find the Spanish a little archaic and difficult. I'm not sure if Darío used archaic Spanish due to the setting or if that was the way he wrote (story written in 1885) but I guess I'll found out.

203CarlosMcRey
Set 17, 2009, 6:35 pm


64. Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake - finished 9/14/09

Titus Groan is the son and heir of Lord Sepulchrave, the 76th Earl Groan of Gormenghast, and the book begins with his birth, which we learn of when Mr. Flay visits Mr. Rottcodd in the Hall of Bright Carvings. Everything in Gormenghast is ruled over by ritual, which is supervised by Mr. Sourdust, but though the birth of Titus means the continuation of the line of the Groans, some suggestion of change seems to be haunting Mr. Flay.

Before the book ends, Titus will not have yet reached two years of age, but already some of this change will have taken place of it, much of it the result of the ambitions of the young and cynical Mr. Steerpike, who escapes from Mr. Swelter's kitchen, talks his way into becoming Dr. Prunesquallor's assistant, allies himself with the twins Clarice and Clora, and develops on interest in Titus' older sister, Fuchsia.

The names suggest characters out of Dickens, and though there is no Amy Dorritt or Oliver Twist in the bunch, the characters are all unique and fascinating. (It's nice to see interesting character names actually be occupied by interesting characters. *cough*Eyre Affair*cough*) I was very pleasantly surprised by how what appeared to be merely (quite funny) caricatures/grotesques ended up revealing depths of humanity.

I was also particularly entranced by Peake's language. The conventional wisdom generally states that a writer shouldn't use three words when two will suffice or an esoteric term when a more recognizable one will do. Titus Groan confirms that some authors are best when following their own instincts to verbosity.

Peake had originally intended to write a multi-work series to take place over four or five books, but due to the onset of Parkinson's was only able to finish the first two, this work and Gormenghast. (A third, Titus Alone, was completed from his notes after his death.) I'm already looking forward to the next in the series but somewhat sad that I will never get to read the entire series as it was to be written.

Incidentally, as soon as I finished Titus, I picked up Dark Ladies with the intention of polishing off the Weirdos and Goths category, but that was not a good idea. Fritz Leiber is a solid writer, easily the best of the original Lovecraft Circle, but his prose just paled in comparison to Peake's. I didn't make it more than a couple of pages in before I realized I should stop and come back later.


65. Los mejores cuentos de Ruben Darío - finished 9/14/09

If you check out Rubén Darío's Wikipedia entry, you'll notice quite a bit of information about his poetry but little more than a mention of his stories. (This is also generally true of the entry in Spanish, which goes quite a bit into his poetry but devotes only a short paragraph to his cuentos.) Having read this little collection, I can see why. As solid as his use of language is, the short stories often felt a little flat to me in the other elements. (Not just character or plot, but also irony, tension, revelation. surprise--all those elements that can make for a really satisfying short story.)

There are some interesting concepts (Don Quijote come to life to aid Spain in the Spanish-American War) or interesting settings (a castle on the Rhine during the height of the Middle Ages), but even those interesting elements often felt underused or not as developed as they could have been. It's not just a question of Dario working with an older sensibility, since the stories are precedded by Poe's by several decades. (And Poe's stories, however archaic they may seem at times, still preserve the ability to get under your skin.) It is possibly the stories are subtler than I give them credit for, so I may come back for a reread.

Still, I think there's a reason Dario is remembered for his poetry not his stories.


66. How to Travel with a Salmon by Umberto Eco - finished 9/14/09

I was travelling from Argentina to California on the 14th, so I had lots of reading time that day. After starting and setting aside Dark Ladies, I figured maybe something light would be more appropriate. I had brought this book with me on vacation with the aim of reading it while travelling. I can't say whether the book benefits from the air travel experience, but I suspect waiting in various security/ticket/immigration/customs lines make one a lot more sympathetic to Eco's wry complaints on the Italian DMV.

Overall, a wonderful light read that looks into the absurdity of contemporary life. There are a few obscure/dated references (at least from the perspective of an American in the year 2009), but otherwise all of Eco's observations are still quite relevant and very funny.

Particularly delightful was "Stars and Stripes," which struck me as similar to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. In it, Eco spins out a whole story of a dysfunctional empire through telegrams, private correspondance and press releases, and the galactic-scale exaggeration allows for much opportunity to examine the absurdity of everyday life. This one totally had me cracking up, and I have to admit I was too embarassed to check if my fellow air travellers in the waiting area in front of Gate 14 were staring at me or not.

As with most works assembled from a loose collection of short pieces, it doesn't fire 100%. One satire on academic discourse delaing with themes in a ribald poem about three owls went on a little too long to the point of recycling its owl-based puns. But there's definitely a lot more hit than miss in the whole collection.

204CarlosMcRey
Set 18, 2009, 1:23 am

Book Started: Murciélagos
Category: Obscure Works
Shared With: 6

This is the Spanish translation of Fledermäuse (Bats), a collection of short stories written by Gustav Meyrink, a rather eccentric figure from the late 19th/early 20th century. He was apparently pretty influential on English horror writers--his best known work, The Golem, was praised by HP Lovecraft--and his view of time also influenced Jorge Luis Borges.

The first story "Maese Leonhard" about a man reminiscing over his life and it's emotional and mystical meaning makes me think of Hermann Hesse filtered through Edgar Allan Poe

Book Started: Dark Ladies
Category: Queer (NBSO) Horror: Goths and Weirdos

I did finally get around to picking this up after letting the Peake experience (pun intended) wear off a bit. It contains two Fritz Leiber novels: Conjure Wife and Our Lady of Darkness.

The first, which I'm already several chapters into, is about a mild-mannered academic at a quiet, small liberal arts college who finds out his wife has been doing "conjure magic"--basically simple spells centered on totemic objects made out of everyday material, the kind of ritual protection associated with disempowered groups. I was surprised at how quickly the protagonist learns about this, as I was expecting a little more wind-up. Still, it'll be interesting to see where it goes from here.

205CarlosMcRey
Set 20, 2009, 12:14 am

Update on Dark Ladies:

I just finished Conjure Wife, the first of the two novels, and it was quite good. Even though the character finds out a lot right away but stays in denial, Leiber still manages to build the tension up nicely and even get a few shocks in. Probably a little staid horror-wise by contemporary standards, but still a really engrossing story of sinister and supernatural goings on in an otherwise everyday setting.

206CarlosMcRey
Editado: Set 23, 2009, 3:28 pm


67. Murciélagos by Gustav Meyrink - finished 9/22/09

There's an interesting variety to the stories in the collection, though a good portion have some of that Herman Hesse by way of Edgar Allen Poe feel. To elaborate a bit... Meyrink was very much into occult studies and at some point converted to Buddhism. So the weird or supernatural in the stories often suggests not insanity (as in Poe) or a nightmarish universe (as in Lovecraft) but an impending revelation regarding the transcendability (sp?) of time, space, even self. They still manage to be nice and eerie, though.

A couple of the stories play out as rather grim satires. "How Dr. Job Paupersum gave his daughter roses" is the story of a highly educated scholar unable to find employment in a modern world. "Amadeo Knödlseder, the incorrigible vulture of the Alps" is like an Aesop's fable on fatalism. Also present, though not explicitly, in many of the stories is the shadow of World War I.

A pretty good collection, which has me looking forward to the day I can get my hands on a copy of The Golem. Incidentally, I read elsewhere that Meyrink was a friend/acquaintance of Franz Kafka, which suggests to me if you incorporate Goethe and Hoffman, to make a strong case for a German tradition of Gothic/fantastic fiction. (Meyrink was Austrian, Kafka Czech, but they both wrote in German.)

Oh, and I've just polished off another category, putting me at 4/9. I was hoping to finish by the end of October, but that doesn't appear likely at this point, since I still have a few big volumes to read, as well as my Straight Horror category (which I've been saving for October).

207CarlosMcRey
Editado: Set 25, 2009, 3:35 am


68. Dark Ladies by Fritz Leiber - finished 9/23/09

Both halves of Dark Ladies ended up being quite good. I've already talked a little about Conjure Wife, which built up to a really solid ending. The second story is Our Lady of Darkness, which takes place in San Francisco in the '70s. The author Franz Westen is looking at Corona Heights from the window of his apartment when he sees a funny brown figure waving at him. Later, he goes to check out the Heights for himself only to find no sign of the funny brown person. That is, until he decides to try to spot his own apartment through his binoculars...

What follows is a solid creepy story which makes the most of its San Francisco setting and that city's colorful past. Leiber has a talent for creating a nice sense of place, which he uses quite successfully in both stories. He also has a pretty good talent for pacing a story, winding the tension just right to make for a nicely suspenseful story. The end of Our Lady of Darkness, while an elegant outcome of what has happened before, did lack a certain visceral power. Two really good stories of the uncanny in the midst of the everyday.

Also, that takes care of my Queer (NBSO) Horror: Goths and Weirdos category, bringing me up to 5/9. Now, back to those Templars...

208CarlosMcRey
Set 25, 2009, 7:28 pm

Book Started: Foucault's Pendulum
Category: Thugs n' Templars

I've actually read Pendulum before, several years ago, but decided it'd be worth revisiting as part of my Templar reading. The first couple of paragraphs, in which our narrator is trying to figure out how to hide in a museum until after it closes, seemed a little awkward, leaving me to wonder if Eco had opted for a challenging start, as with The Name of the Rose. But I'm far enough into it that it is really starting to draw me in.

209CarlosMcRey
Set 29, 2009, 4:15 pm

Book Started: Mr. X
Category: Straight (NBSO) Horror

Of all the books I've got slotted for this category, this is the only one by an author whom I've previously read. Peter Straub is one of the better known mainstream horror writers, pretty highly regarded. I'd say second to Stephen King, though there's no specific scale to judge that on.

Shadowland (the work I've read) was an interesting dark fantasy tale about magic, which sometimes bordered on horror. It was a pretty solid read, though I'd hardly call it one of my favorites.

Anyway, I've read the first few chapters so far. I have to admit, the introduction of the protagonist has a bit of a John Irving-lite feel, which I'm not sure I like. There are hints of something mysterious associated with the main character, and a shadowy figure who seems to commit acts of violence. Has potential, we'll see where it goes.

Also, Foucault's Pendulum rocks. That is all.

210CarlosMcRey
Editado: Out 5, 2009, 1:21 pm


69. Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco - finished 10/4/09

It's funny, rereading this now after so many years, to realize how much impact this book had on me. It had been introduced to me as a more soberand scholarly variation on The Illuminatus! Trilogy. At the time I read it, I knew little about Aleister Crowley, cabala, the Golden Dawn, the OTO, G.I. Gurdjieff, Giordano Bruno, tantra, Thelema or the secret life of puppets. Would Eco be mystified that this book inspired me to learn more about the western magic(k)al tradition, even becoming a bit of an enthusiast, though not quite a believer? Perhaps just as there are no truly anti-war films, it's impossible to write about the history of secret societies and hermetic traditions without making them seem at least a little mysterious and glamorous.

I wonder if Eco himself gets caught up in it and realizing what he's doing recoils in disgust or embarrassment. My impression of the character of Lia is that she seems to be around mainly to bring the narrator back to earth. The book seems to reflect both Eco's own fascination with the crazy collection of cults he's studying and his own realization at the silliness of getting caught up in it.

I can actually sympathize with that. I once studied several conspiracy theories and was struck with how compelling they seemed, even when they bordered on the ludicrous. Reading about many of them just made them seem more compelling, perhaps because they share similar sorts of fractured logic.

I'm not sure if I liked it quite as much this time around, though I'm not sure if that's because of the thicket of hermetic groups and ideas or because Eco feels the need to pull the reader back just when they're finding the material enthralling.


The Last Templar by Raymond Khoury - finished 10/4/09

I was enjoying this pretty well up until the last "act" (to use screenplay terminology), where it started to indulge in one too many lengthy theological debates about what the ramifications of revealing the Templar secret would be, at which point it really began to drag. By the last disk, I was just wishing the novel would come to an end.

Incidentally, this last work convinced me that I should read The Maltese Falcon some time. It started with Our Lady of Darkness, in which it turns out that Dashiell Hammett may have played a role in the supernatural spookiness at work, then with Foucault's Pendulum where the narrator compares himself to Sam Spade, and finally with this book, where the big secret is hidden in a falcon. I really think the LIbrary (of Babel?) is trying to tell me something...

Interestingly, the big secret is actually pretty similar to the one in The Templar Legacy. I think it was actually done a little better in Legacy, mostly because it lacked drawn-out theological debates.

Also, Khoury repeats the popular misconception that Gnostics were proto-Buddhists who believed some kind of self-knowledge could lead to salvation. As pointed out both in The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot and the New Yorker piece I linked to above, Gnostics actually believed only a few would achieve salvation and that only through gnosis a specific kind of divine knowledge which was distinct from self-knowledge. It is, of course, possible that the Gnostics would have evolved into something more inclusive and Buddhist like, but to my knowledge there is no evidence they were anywhere close. (And I'll stop there, because I know enough about the Gnostics to know when to quit.)

211CarlosMcRey
Out 6, 2009, 5:53 pm

Book Started: Da Vinci Code
Category: Audiobooks (Extra Credit)

Is there a dividing line between morbid curiosity and outright masochism? I do believe I've crossed it right now.

I actually expect this to be a somewhat less painful albeit blander experience than Angels and Demons since I've already a) seen the movie and b) read Angels and Demons, so must be doubly inoculated to whatever passes for English in Dan Brown's world.

212CarlosMcRey
Out 9, 2009, 3:39 am


70. Mr. X by Peter Straub - finished 10/8/09

For as long as he can remember, Ned Dunstan has been haunted by a profound sense of something missing, nightmares of a shadowy figure and what happens to him on every birthday. Sensing that his mother is dying, he returns to his hometown. It is then that she reveals to him that which she has kept from him his entire life: the name of his father. But this revelation gives way to new mysteries, and Ned will have to learn much more about his family before he can understand who he truly is.

I've heard Straub, along with King, described as "conventional" or "mainstream" horror, though I'd be more tempted to label it middlebrow. There's a certain skill to the writing, but not so much that it stands out. There is a cast of "realistic" characters, who are not particularly forgettable. The plot develops gradually, allowing for the author to develop themes, but losing a certain degree of energy in the process.

I have to admit, there's nothing wrong with this type of story, but I tend to find them disappointing. (I had a similar reaction to Duma Key.) Why is it that these novels limp along, dishing out little clues like crumbs while poorly developing their supernatural themes and making us sit through endless conversations about nothing, not to mention getting to hear about what the character eats or what music he listens to before a half-assed confrontation with whatever boogeyman has been hinted at throughout the entire novel?

Mr. X actually has a scene where the will of a minor character is being read out loud. "Wow," I thought, "I'm glad that scene was included, because I can't think of anything more frightening than a will being read Wait, did I say 'frightening'? Sorry, I meant 'boring'." Seriously, everything relevant about that scene could have been summarized in a couple of paragraphs.

Okay, I was a bit frustrated by the middle section of the novel. The first 100 pages were pretty good, kept the story moving. And parts of the last 100 pages, where we get the final confrontation, were entertaining. But, overall, I wish this book hadn't been 510 pages long.

213CarlosMcRey
Out 10, 2009, 2:18 am

Book Started: A Lower Deep
Category: Straight (NBSO) Horror

Moving on in the horror category...

Well, this book is quite a bit smaller with larger print and wider margins, so I almost feel as if I'm reading a children's book. Admittedly, after Mr. X something a little trashy and silly will probably be a relief. The story introduces us to a man who seems to have some form of magical powers. He follows a couple he sees marked for death, which leads to a furious battle with a demon. Then he learns his old coven is trying to recruit him.

So far, silly but fun.

214CarlosMcRey
Out 15, 2009, 12:48 pm


71. A Lower Deep by Tom Piccirilli - finished 9/14/09

Falling somewhere between horror and dark fantasy, A Lower Deep tells the story of a necromancer with a demonic familiar who gets caught up in a plot by a previous coven-mate to possibly bring about the end of the world. It's mythology is rather convoluted and the action tends towards the surreal, but Piccirilli has a certain panache to his writing that makes it work. Not a great work of horror but overall pretty enjoyable.

215CarlosMcRey
Out 15, 2009, 12:53 pm

Book Started: The Keep
Category: Straight (NBSO) Horror

By F. Paul Wilson, not Jennifer Egan. (I'd already read her book of the same name earlier this year.) Something of a cult classic from what I gather, the story is about a squad of Nazis who have set up a lookout post in the Carpathian Mountains of Romania. Then they start disappearing, one by one, after night falls. The premise reminds me a bit of an old Night Gallery episode I saw once.

216CarlosMcRey
Out 21, 2009, 5:19 am


72. The Keep by F. Paul Wilson - finished 10/18/09

I'm a bit divided on this one. The premise is solid and for the first half of the novel, Wilson executes it quite well, making for a great supernatural Gothic tale, down to a very creepy vampire. Even the slow progress of the mysterious red-headed stranger adds an element of mystery and suspense. The novel takes a twist about two-thirds of the way through that changes it from supernatural gothic to heroic fantasy. It's not bad and not completely unexpected, but it does lose some of that well-established creepiness established earlier as well as making some of the earlier character dynamics sort of pointless.

217CarlosMcRey
Out 21, 2009, 5:24 am

Book Started: The Keeper
Category: Strraight (NBSO) Horror

More than creepiness or dread, this story strikes me as very sad. Set in the decaying town of Bedford, Maine, where the mill which was the main source of employment has shut down. A young woman by the name of Susan Marley is feared and taken advantage of by the rest of the town. The talk is that she is a witch, and they may be right. Reminiscent of Shirley Jackson, though Langan doesn't quite have Jackson's verbal skillz. Still, for a first novel, it's very striking so far.

218CarlosMcRey
Out 27, 2009, 1:24 am


73. The Keeper by Sarah Langan - finished 10/21/09

There's an interesting amalgam of Shirley Jackson, Stephen King and something else here, though I can't quite put my finger on the something else. Langan brings a griminess and sadness to her portrayal of a backwater Maine town that I have a hard time imagining King doing. And the cast of characters isn't exactly (Shirley) Jacksonian. Anyway, I think the novel worked itself into my dreams which is always a sign of an effective horror novel.

The doom that comes to Bedford, one which builds year after year, in part as a consequence of the evil which has been done in the town. Finally, this current of malevolence finds root in an innocent family whose own troubles lead to a terrifying series of consequences. As I said, a potent, if grim and melancholy work of horror. I will probably seek out further books from Langan in the future.

And because I haven't been on or posted in several days, I ended up reading another whole novel.


74. Ghost Story by Peter Straub - finished 10/25/09

My second Straub novel this year, and thankfully much stronger than the previous one. (Entry # 70 above.) I can see how this is generally considered Straub's strongest novel. Something terrible seems to be happening to a group of old men who live in Milburn, New York. First one dies from a strange heart attack. Then the rest of the men begin to have strange nightmares. Finally realize something may be up and contact the nephew of the dead man.

In Danse Macabre, King mentions this book as being in some ways closer to a Gothic novel than to contemporary horror novels. That aspect, especially the story telling, is one of the more enjoyable facets of the novel. I actually would have liked to read a few more stories worked into the narrative, but that's because of my fondness for those kinds of twisty stories-within-stories narratives. (See entry # 60 above.)

219CarlosMcRey
Out 27, 2009, 1:28 am

Book Started: Creepers
Category: Straight (NBSO) Horror

I'm actually a little sad to have had to drop a novel from this category in order to fit in the extra Straub. However, I figured I'd just go back to where I had left off, which was my The Keep/The Keeper/Creepers progression. The set up is that a group of five people are going to be doing some 'urban spelunking' which takes them into a long-abandoned luxury hotel. The hotel was modeled in part on Mayan pyramids. As the intrepid explorers make their into the hotel through the sewers, they notice some very odd sights--mutated rats and albino cats. Very cool so far.

220cmbohn
Out 27, 2009, 12:31 pm

Ghost Story sounds really good to me. I wonder if my library has it. It sounds just right for Halloween.

221CarlosMcRey
Out 29, 2009, 3:17 am

I'd guess they probably do. I think it's among Straub's better known works and considered by some to be his best work.

222cmbohn
Out 29, 2009, 7:31 pm

I picked it up today. It looks good - thanks for the rec!

223CarlosMcRey
Out 29, 2009, 8:04 pm


75. Creepers by David Morrell - finished 10/27/09

My previous Morrell read was a short story about an art history major doing a dissertation on a Van Gogh-like painter who went mad and committed suicide. It's a variation on the "motif of harmful sensation" that worked pretty well. But it in no way compared me for this novel, which hews pretty close to thriller territory. As is probably clear from some of my Templar reading, I don't really care for thrillers that much, but this one was just a blast.

I actually don't want to give too much away, except to briefly outline what I thought was so well done. To begin with, Morrell knows how to create a very convincing atmosphere. The odd hotel and the mutated animals gives a nicely subtle sense of eeriness. It's not an overwhelming atmosphere, more like a background noise that keeps the reader from feeling entirely comfortable. Secondly, the book has a nice progression as things get worse and worse. Morrell also knows how to pace the story, how to really build up the sense of threat and continue moving the story forward before the reader gets too settled.

Not a deep book, not sophisticated, but a novel which will really suck you in.

224CarlosMcRey
Editado: Out 31, 2009, 1:47 am

Book Started: The Rising
Category: Straight (NBSO) Horror

Book Started: Dead City
Category: Straight (NBSO) Horror

ZOMBIE DEATH MATCH!

In honor of Halloween, I decided to finish off the month with the two zombie books from this category. At first, I wasn't sure whether to read one first, then the other or if I should just switch back and forth between them. The first chapter of The Rising, which was so full of cheese you could have entered it into the Wisconsin Dairy Fair, made me decide to switch back and forth. Additionally, I figured since there's a good chance that one novel would capture my interest and end up getting finished first, I thought I'd stage it as a competition with whichever novel engrossed me first being declared the winner.

At first, I thought McKinney's work was probably going to succeed. It's biggest flaw is that the writing is a bit pedestrian, but it has its moments and has made for a solid story. But then I realized that Keene's novel is meant to be a comedy, and I have to admit it is pretty funny. Keene is drawing obvious inspiration from the Evil Dead and Return of the Living Dead movies. Some very dark comedy. So far, it's still a bit of a toss-up.

225CarlosMcRey
Nov 4, 2009, 10:23 pm

ZOMBIE DEATH MATCH RESULTS!


76. Dead City by Joe McKinney - finished 11/2/09
77. The Rising by Brian Keene - finished 11/3/09

OK, major LT pet peeve. When you type up several paragraphs about your reading experience, hit Submit and get an error message. So, this will be nuance-free until I work up the desire to re-create the original.

McKinney won. He's not brilliant, but despite some weak points, the story is solid. Keene is a hack. Don't bother with him unless you have a fondness for badly overwritten prose and lots of gore.

226CarlosMcRey
Editado: Nov 7, 2009, 11:29 am

Book Started: In the Valley of the Kings
Category: Queer (NBSO) Horror - Goths and Weirdos

Ever read a review of a book that just makes you think, "Oh, man, I have got to read that book." That was my reaction to the New York Times review of Terrence Holt's In the Valley of the Kings. Comparison's to Poe, Lovecraft, Schulz. Talk about making one's literary palette water!

I've read several of the stories so far and am very much enjoying them. My initial reaction was that the stories were too emotionally detached to be effective, their power dissipated over the distance from text to reading experience. However, as I've gotten further in, I've grown more comfortable with Holt's style and found the stories more satisfying. I'm reminded (though it's perhaps an odd comparison) of the horror writer Ramsey Campbell whose short stories are even better on a second reading.

There's an interesting preoccupation with language in Holt's stories, and with the way we use them to connect: to other people, to our pasts, to our surroundings.

Book Started: Hourglass
Category: Eastern European Authors

I don't remember when Danilo Kis first popped up on my radar as one of those authors whose books to be on the lookout for. I think it may have been a review of The Encyclopedia of the Dead an amazon that first got me thinking there was something there worth checking out. I toyed with the idea of reading Encyclopedia as part of this category, but opted for Hourglass since the title seemed a clear allusion to Schulz' Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass (which kicks off this category). (What can I say, I couldn't resist the symmetry.)

Just read the first chapter so far, very surreal and evocative. I have the impression this is the sort of book that really demands attention, so will have to carve some time out for it this weekend.

227CarlosMcRey
Nov 9, 2009, 3:22 am


In the Valley of the Kings by Terrence Holt - finished 11/7/09

Finished this and enjoyed it very much. The stories are a little difficult to describe, which is not that surprising given the influence of authors such as Kafka and Borges. There is a certain heaviness to the influence, which sometimes takes a little from the stories, obscuring Holt's own authorial voice.

For me the best of the stories are the title story and the three stories preceding it. These three stories strike me as the most clearly science-fictional in nature, and the use of language and distance and a certain sense of chilliness really seemed to shine through with a voice of their own, something in the tradition of Phillip Dick or Stanislaw Lem, yet they weren't specifically like either of those two authors. Similarly, the title story, in which an Egyptologist searches for the tomb of a pharaoh whose very name has been wiped from history. I could think of many antecedents or other authors which I was reminded of by the story, yet it clearly seemed Holt's own.

In these stories, one of the themes that really comes out is our relationship with language and how language mediates our relationship with everything else: other people, our environment, our pasts, our own sense of who we are. It's a double-edged sword, as language can conceal as much as it reveals, a sort of tragic underpinning to the nature of our relationships. It's sometimes a little bit chilly within the confines of Holt's stories, but I think there still shines through the value of the struggle of understanding.

Considering the sort of fiction Holt is writing here--conceptually heavy, surreal, sometimes plotless--I think this little volume is quite an achievement. It's definitely not for everyone--it's chilliness might give you frostbite, but if Holt continues to publish, he will be an author to watch.

228CarlosMcRey
Nov 16, 2009, 2:55 pm


78. Hourglass by Danilo Kiš - finished 11/11/09

In an interesting twist, it turns out that Kiš' own father once talked about writing a book to be named Hourglass, which he described as a sort of "bourgeois horror novel." This comes up in the novel because its protagonist, identified only as E.S., is based on Kiš' father, who died in the Holocaust. So, perhaps there is not intended allusion to Bruno Schulz. Then again, the hourglass of the title refers to is a Rubin Vase.



The Rubin vase motif suggests the possibility of multiple correct interpretations to any scenario, as well as calling attention to the reader/viewer's active role in interpreting what he sees. It's a brilliant but subtle bit of postmodernism which I didn't even think about until looking up information on the Rubin vase.

Quite appropriate, too, in that Hourglass is a Holocaust novel with no Holocaust. It's a sort of collage of moments in the life of E.S. during that last few months before his death in the Holocaust. Some are little scenes, some are the ramblings of E.S. himself, others are seeming transcripts from a police investigation, including interrogations of E.S. In these last, in which a nameless bureaucrat seems to think some sinister purpose may be hiding behind the most banal of details, the novel takes on a Kafkian flavor.

As I said above, this is a Holocaust novel, but one without the usual elements of train cars, death camps or brutal guards, but seen indirectly though the effects it has one one man and his world, something ominous just on the horizon.

229avatiakh
Nov 16, 2009, 4:42 pm

Hourglass sounds like an interesting book, I'm adding it to my wishlist. How far off finishing the challenge are you? I have 3 books left now so the end is in sight.

230CarlosMcRey
Nov 16, 2009, 8:23 pm

Well, I've just finished #79 (which I haven't posted on yet), so I'm down to 2 books.

231CarlosMcRey
Editado: Nov 17, 2009, 8:25 pm


79. The Ruins by Scott Smith - finished 11/16/09

Six young people on vacation--four longtime friends and two others--venture into an archaelogical dig in the wilds of the Yucatan. Once there they find themselves confronted with something that they could never have imagined--an enemy that is cunning, manipulative and has a taste for flesh.

Smith does a good job of weaving the character/psychological elements with the suspense in such a way that it really amps up the tension. It also takes a group of characters (mostly American college students on vacation) who could easily be indistinguishible and gets them to stand out as individuals. A really fun horror read.

232CarlosMcRey
Editado: Nov 17, 2009, 10:39 pm

Book Started: La fiesta del chivo
Category: Orientales y otros americanos
Nationality: Peruano

(For some reason, the touchstone only works when it's called The Feast of the Goat.)

This is my first real exposure to Vargas Llosa, who is probably second only to Garcia Marquez in being a central figure of the Latin American Boom. I can't say if this is the best entry into his fiction, as it is one of his later novels. Long after I had obtained this work and added it to my challenge list, I toyed with the idea of dropping it for something more amusing (such as Pantaleon y las visitadoras) or perhaps older and more pivotal in MVL's international debut (such as La casa verde). As you can probably guess, I decided to just jump into this later work of his. (Original publication: 2000)

The novel deals with the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo over the Dominican Republic, showing it trough three different threads. One is from the point of view of Trujillo himself, another that of his assassins, and the final the returned daughter of a former functionary in Trujillo's government. It's interesting so far. The Trujillo material so far has dwelt a little too much on his own past, which feels a little artificially like the author's attempt to get a reader not familiar with the history up to speed. Admittedly, I'm not familiar with the history, but it can still seem a little forced. Then again, perhaps old dictators really do spend a lot of time thinking about past battles, enemies, betrayals, conquests, etc.

This falls into the category of dictator novel, which has a rather lengthy history in Latin America, stretching back arguably to Facundo.

233CarlosMcRey
Dez 8, 2009, 9:25 pm


80. La fiesta del chivo by Mario Vargas Llosa - finished 12/7/09
(The touchstone on this one is a bit funky, but should come up under The Feast of the Goat.)

I thought I'd take it easy in terms of reading pace but am still a bit surprised at how long it took me to get through this book. It's a fairly long work (518 pages), but I was not reading anything else at the time. Perhaps some measure of exhaustion is setting in, because the length of time it took me to complete does not reflect the quality of the book.

As I mentioned above, the novel's principal focus is the last days of the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo as seen through the eyes of Trujillo himself and others involved in the assassination and its aftermath, as well as a retrospective POV from the daughter (Uranita Cabral) of one of his close associates. Trujillo is the Goat in question, as El Chivo is one of the nicknames he goes by. (That Vargas Llosa chooses to this as the title of the book raises some interesting questions. Is there a suggestion that Trujillo's death is a sort of sacrifice? An act of redemptive violence? Is there an echo of that notion in the Uranita story line?)

The historical elements, whether through the eyes of Trujillo or his assassins, was quite good and often harrowing. We first meet the assassins as they wait for their opportunity. We get to know each of them and how their experiences with the regime have brought them to this point where they are willing to risk everything to kill a man who many consider the savior of the nation. Once they succeed in their mission, we again follow them as they attempt to survive the aftermath and the terrifying consequences few of them saw.

The portrayal of Trujillo is quite powerful as well, despite my earlier criticism of Vargas Llosa's use of his internal monologue as exposition. That monologue is in keeping with the wider portrayal of a man for whom political and military power is critical to his sense of identity and manhood. There's a clear connection drawn between the importance often given to machismo in Latin cultures and the history within same of caudillo governments.

If there is a weak point, it'd have to be the Uranita portion. Uranita fled her homeland at 14 to go to school and later college in the United States, resulting in a successful career working for the United States. She returns to visit her aging father, who has been rendered an invalid by a severe stroke. Once back, she meets with her aunt and cousins and finally reveals why she fled all those years ago.

I'm of two minds about the thread. One the one hand, it provides a necessary feminine counterpoint to the other (male-centered) stories. It also adds some resonance to the machismo-caudillo dynamic of the rest of the novel. Yet, it doesn't feel entirely integrated with the rest of the novel. Her chapters started to feel like interruptions on a story that was already quite gripping on its own terms. It also felt "novelistic" in a way the rest of the book didn't, as if asking me to be impressed with its construction instead of my reaction to the other sections where I felt caught up in events and characters and wasn't as conscious of, Now I am reading a novel by an accomplished author. I suspect people will have different reactions to her chapters.

234VictoriaPL
Dez 9, 2009, 8:34 am

One more and you're done!

235eairo
Dez 9, 2009, 8:41 am

I remotely remember having simiral thoughts about the different POVs/threads in The Feast of the Goat.

I also remember it being a slow read. But while you slowly finished the book, my reading eventually got so slow I still haven't finished it. I think I will some day, though. I don't remember thinking it was a bad book when I abandoned it.

236CarlosMcRey
Dez 11, 2009, 8:46 pm

eairo, I actually sped up as I got near the end. In part, because there seemed to be fewer Urania chapters, and also just because I thought I might have been dragging my feet to much.

Now I'm on to the last book(s). I couldn't resist the temptation to pile on a little more. Hey, I've stil got the better part of a month. So, Thug has been started. It's pretty interesting. Dash starts it off a little novelistically, with a dramatic description of one group travelling along the dusty roads of Northern India, but then settles into more standard non-fiction mode.

I've also started La puta de Babilonia, from the Colombian writer Fernando Vallejo. He also wrote Our Lady of the Assassins, which was adapted for film. The title of the book (which LT inexplicably translates as The Bitch of Babylonia) refers to the Catholic Church, which Vallejo is attacking. This is a very odd work, written in a rather delirious, almost stream of consciousness style.

237CarlosMcRey
Dez 22, 2009, 2:26 pm


81. Thug: The True Story of India's Murderous Cult by Mike Dash - finished 12/21/09

With the completion of Thug, things come around full circle Thuggee-wise. I started the year of with Confessions of a Thug, which is a novelistic treatment of the author's real experiences and observations as part of the British anti-Thug effort. That book revealed a certain tension between Thuggee as a form of criminal activity and the more disturbing possibility of Thuggee as a religious/cultural practice. In later works, such as The Deceivers, Thuggee becomes more and more a dark cult, a sinister religious practice. Though it's not explicitly a Thug novel, Dan Simmons' Song of Kali is like the culmination of that trend, drawing from the most lurid and shocking elements of Thuggee to paint Indian culture as an almost cosmic evil. Then, with Kevin Rushby's Children of Kali, a note of skepticism starts to creep in. Isn't this account of Thuggee as a religious practice, wholly devoid of material concerns, a bit far-fetched? Is it possible the British, in a foreign and exotic land, overreacted to a criminal problem by associating it with their own darkest projections?

So, with Mike Dash's excellent Thug, these questions get addressed with a more thorough and dispassionate perspective. Dash goes back to primary sources, meticulously reconstructing the known history of Thuggee, from their earliest encounters with native authorities through the whole Thug campaign. In the process, Dash deromanticizes Thuggee and the British effort against it to a great deal. Luckily, the true story is quite fascinating in its own right. In order to arrest and convict Thugs, the British created a fairly modern system for collecting, organizing, verifying and utilizing evidence, both fictional and testimonial. The system worked brilliantly and became a model for other police and justice departments. (Although, one might argue that the dark side is the first signs of the modern security state, with its mania for keeping tab on its own citizens.) I would have liked Dash to delve a little further into what traditions/theories Sleeman (the main architect of this transformation) drew from or if the new approach was strictly sui generis, but that is a minor quibble.

So, the book takes me back in good part to Confessions of a Thug. Strip away the cultural misunderstanding, and you see a group of criminals whose activities may have been novel but whose motivations were as old as crime itself. The extent of their crimes was due in large part to the political and social realities in which they operated. And while individuals could come off as noble and exotic, they were in the end easily defeated by meticulous police work.

238VictoriaPL
Dez 22, 2009, 2:29 pm

Congratulations Carlos!!

239cmbohn
Dez 22, 2009, 3:46 pm

Nice job on finishing!

240hailelib
Dez 22, 2009, 3:53 pm

Great finish!