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July 03
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Siria
is currently reading:
Parable of the Sower (Hardcover)
by
Octavia E. Butler
bookshelves:
currently-reading
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my rating:
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progress:
(page 52 of 299)
— 1 day ago, 11:07AM
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Siria
gave  to:
Grace and Truth (Paperback)
by
Jennifer Johnston
bookshelves:
21st-century,
irish-fiction
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my rating:
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read in July, 2009
Siria said:
"Johnston always writes fluidly and elegantly, and I always find that her novels are very humane ones in the fullest sense of the word—books which take a wry, sardonic but not an unkind look at the best and worst of human emotion. Quite an Irish vie...more
Johnston always writes fluidly and elegantly, and I always find that her novels are very humane ones in the fullest sense of the word—books which take a wry, sardonic but not an unkind look at the best and worst of human emotion. Quite an Irish viewpoint, I think. Grace and Truth is a well-structured novella, and Johnston handles the juxtaposition between past and present with skill, though at times I thought that the parallels she constructed between Sally and the Bishop were a little too obvious. The climax of the novel is rather predictable, and I felt some doubts about the ending—it felt just slightly too pat. Would people really react like that? Hrm. Still, as a novel of everyday irony, this slim volume is worth the read.(less)
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July 02
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Siria
gave to:
The Namesake (Paperback)
by
Jhumpa Lahiri
bookshelves:
21st-century,
american-fiction,
by-poc
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my rating:
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read in July, 2009
Siria said:
"Lahiri's prose is beautifully elegant, concise and quiet and smooth. She has such a gift for detail, for noting the small aspects of everyday life and weaving them subtly into her narrative, that The Namesake is never anything less than a pleasure to...more
Lahiri's prose is beautifully elegant, concise and quiet and smooth. She has such a gift for detail, for noting the small aspects of everyday life and weaving them subtly into her narrative, that The Namesake is never anything less than a pleasure to read. As with the previous work of hers that I've read, the short story collection Unaccustomed Earth, Lahiri focuses on the immigrant experience—Ashoke and Amina, Bengali immigrants to the US from Calcutta, and their two American-born children, Gogol and Sonali—and she is very talented at teasing out the disconnection which arises from living between two cultures.
That said, I found the ending was too rushed, and that it lacked substance and weight. I could see the outline of what Lahiri wanted to do with the ending, but I don't think she quite managed it—the last few pages didn't have the emotional freight for me that they should have. Oddly, I finished the book thinking that if the book had focused on the life of Gogol's mother, Amina, rather than on Gogol himself, it would have been much more engaging for me.(less)
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July 01
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Siria
gave to:
Gemini (House of Niccolo)
by
Dorothy Dunnett
bookshelves:
20th-century,
british-fiction,
historical-fiction
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my rating:
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read in July, 2009
Siria said:
"There are times when Gemini reads a little too much as if it is a 700 page long epilogue to the Niccoló series, especially in the middle of the novel when Dunnett is working hard to make her narrative fit with historical fact, and everything seems t...more
There are times when Gemini reads a little too much as if it is a 700 page long epilogue to the Niccoló series, especially in the middle of the novel when Dunnett is working hard to make her narrative fit with historical fact, and everything seems to drag a little. It's much more episodic than the previous instalments in the series, and while the pace does pick up substantially towards the end, and the revelations once more come thick and fast, it's something of a let-down when compared to the previous books. Of course, what it does do is make me want to re-read both the Lymond Chronicles and the Niccoló books, if only so that I can get straight in my head this gnarled specimen of a family tree (do NOT click if you don't want to be thoroughly spoiled for both series all the way up to the last 50 pages of the Niccoló series), never mind the resonances and the parallels that Dunnett has set up between the two series.(less)
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June 24
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Siria
gave  to:
Norwegian Wood (Paperback)
by
Haruki Murakami
bookshelves:
20th-century,
by-poc,
japanese-fiction
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my rating:
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read in June, 2009
Siria said:
"(Cate, I don't think this book is for you.)
Much more straightforward than many of Murakami's novels—there's none of his trademark magical realism—Norwegian Wood is still a complex tale of maturation and loneliness in 1960s Tokyo. For ...more
(Cate, I don't think this book is for you.)
Much more straightforward than many of Murakami's novels—there's none of his trademark magical realism—Norwegian Wood is still a complex tale of maturation and loneliness in 1960s Tokyo. For all that it's set in a world that's very grounded and realistic, this is still quite a disturbing novel in many ways: people are oddly self-contained, love is not unconditional, there is no real sense of home. He's quite interested in exploring what it is to be 'normal' or 'not normal', and how an obsession with whether or not one is 'normal' can be much more damaging than any real variation from the norm. (less)
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June 21
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June 19
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Siria
gave  to:
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman (Paperback)
by
Haruki Murakami
bookshelves:
21st-century,
by-poc,
japanese-fiction,
short-stories
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my rating:
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read in November, 2008
Siria said:
"This collection of stories has all the hallmarks of Murakami's writing: strange, whimsical, funny (in both ha-ha and peculiar forms) and sometimes bewildering. As with all short story collections, some of them seemed to have been included just to com...more
This collection of stories has all the hallmarks of Murakami's writing: strange, whimsical, funny (in both ha-ha and peculiar forms) and sometimes bewildering. As with all short story collections, some of them seemed to have been included just to complete the volume (or else had a function for the author that went completely over my head) and fell flat for me; there's also the danger that reading twenty four separate instalments of such utter surrealism in quick succession can work against the collection. Yet when it works, it works startlingly well, and overall Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman comes together as quite a cohesive meditation on identity, and moments of revelation. Personal favourites: A 'Poor Aunt' Story; Nausea, 1979; The Ice Man; Firefly; Hanalei Bay; Where I'm Likely to Find It; The Kidney-Shaped Stone That Moves Every Day; and A Shinagawa Monkey.(less)
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Siria
gave to:
Inés of My Soul (Hardcover)
by
Isabel Allende
bookshelves:
21st-century,
by-poc,
chilean-fiction,
historical-fiction
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my rating:
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read in November, 2008
Siria said:
"Allende writes enjoyable and entertainingly, but in Inés of my Soul she is nowhere near at her best. In a book about not just the conquistadors of Chile, but a conquistadora, it's unsurprising that plot and melodramas, politics and romance would tak...more
Allende writes enjoyable and entertainingly, but in Inés of my Soul she is nowhere near at her best. In a book about not just the conquistadors of Chile, but a conquistadora, it's unsurprising that plot and melodramas, politics and romance would take up a large chunk of this book—but sadly, that often comes at the expense of character development, and there were times when Inés of my Soul felt like a run-of-the-mill romance novel.
Allende sets about to retrieve Inéz Suárez from the historical obscurity which her gender and the centuries have given her, but the portrait she paints is a rather ill-defined one. There were some passages of prose that were truly luminous, even in translation, but I never felt that I got to know Inéz terribly well—nor did I feel that Allende truly got to grips with the problems of writing a (largely sympathetic) novel from the point of view of a group responsible for untold levels of cultural genocide.(less)
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Siria
gave to:
White Teeth Tv Tie In (Paperback)
by
Zadie Smith
bookshelves:
20th-century,
british-fiction,
by-poc
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my rating:
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read in January, 2005
Siria said:
"White Teeth has definite weaknesses—there are places where the tone wavers into over-zealousness, the characterisation isn't always believable, and I found the ending rather disappointing. For all that, this is a remarkable first novel, written with ...more
White Teeth has definite weaknesses—there are places where the tone wavers into over-zealousness, the characterisation isn't always believable, and I found the ending rather disappointing. For all that, this is a remarkable first novel, written with a lively energy and spark which I hope is a promise of great things from Smith in the future. (The disappointing The Autograph Man notwithstanding.) She melds a great variety of themes and topics—war and interracial relations, love and religion, science and history, colonialism and heritage—into one frenetic, but usually harmonious, whole.(less)
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