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4/5English edition: Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy
Not easy to talk about this book, there is too much.
It is a philosophycal and spiritual book where Tolstoj talks about the "big" question: why a man hurts another one? How can we change society and make it better?
It deals with the social injustices, the bad penitentiary system (and unfortunately many things aren't changed), the exploitation of peasants and so on.
I have found some points in common with Gandhi: the non-violence, compassion, brotherhood, pity for everybody but also some concepts of the Gospels like: forgiveness, "don't look the spliter in other's eye but look the log that is in yours".
It is very spiritual and Tolstoj makes a good analysis of society and men's behavior and wants to look for a solution to live better without damaging nobody: love and pity; compassion and forgiveness; a society where everybody has the same rights.
It was an interesting read and I liked it much better than War and Peace. The book is also half autobiographical because Tolstoj was very rich and had a dissolute life when he was young, he was a typical aristocrat of those years in Russia but he begins to have spiritual struggles, he sees the social injustices and at the end of his life he changes and wanted also to give his land to the peasants and tries to live in a simple and humble way.
3/5Sorry, no English edition!
It is a collection of anecdotes, quotations or excerpts from the texts of Hinduism: Mahabharata, the Ramayana, the Upanishad and Purana. There are also short stories passed down orally from spiritual guru and these are the ones that I liked the most.
You surely know these stories: there is the story of "kup manduk", the prince that didn't know he was the son of a king, the story of Janaka and Sanatkumara, the elephant and the blinds, the story of Brahma that decided to hide "the divine" in the heart of the people because he knew it was the only place people would never go looking for, the story of Pundalik and so on.
There are also some parables by Sri Ramakrishna and other spiritual leaders.
4/5It is a collection of the best short stories by Franz Kafka.
I didn't know if giving it 3 or 4 stars but at the end I decided for 4 stars because there are really good stories though others were boring.
I've read it in German in order to see if Kafka loses a lot with the translation. I read a story of the book in German and then I searched for the same story in Italian and the difference is that in German there is more anxiety, in my opinion.
The stories I liked the most were:
In the Penal Colony
Blumfeld, an Elderly Bachelor
A Report to an Academy
2/5English edition: The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
I give it two stars only because I managed to finish it but I didn't liked this book.
It's a boring story and I was not at all involved; it is predictable, there is a happy ending, there are mysteries that are solved and the questions find answers...all things that I don't like. And any attempt by the writer to impress or mislead the reader with twists or new evidences has failed miserably.
It's a book that hasn't left me anything except the feeling of having wasted my time.
This is the book that a girl in the second hand bookshop gave me telling that this is one of the best books she had ever read and she didn't wanted to put it again on the shelf, she had to give it to somebody.
Never, never trust people of whom you don't know the tastes.
Mod
Smitha wrote: "it was in my to-read list. After this review I will push it back in the list"Don't do it, we have different tastes! Perhaps you may like it: there is some mystery, there are a lot of things to be answered, there is love for books, the story of twins....This book has a high rating on GR. You must watch what people with your same taste have said about it. I have seen that Sherin rated it 4 stars. Hope she will add a review.
Mod
3/5English edition: Hunger by Knut Hamsun
It was a good and interesting read in fact I was undecided between 3 or 4 stars.
It talks about a man, a writer, who is poor and so he suffers from hunger. The hunger leads him to have delirium, he seems really mad and makes and says crazy things. But despite the hunger he is honest and morally intact and he would never steal in order to eat something. Sometimes he writes a good article and so he earns a bit of money but this doesn't last long. The long days of hunger, the long periods of hunger bring him to mental and physical diseases.
It was interesting to read and the steps from mental sanity to delirium are well written. Hamsun has been considered the Norwegian Dostoyevsky but...mmm...I don't know if we can compare him to Dostoyevsky.
4/5English edition: Philosophy in the Boudoir or The Immoral Mentors by Marquis de Sade.
It was an interesting read though I don't agree with all the opinions of de Sade. In this book he expresses all his philosophical thought, much better than in Justine, and in my opinion he was really a genius. His philosophy is: nature is the mother of everything and people must only follow the laws of Nature. He expresses his thoughts about religion, society, human kind, politics, people and their morals...very original thoughts but they remain only a philosophical speculation since these thoughts can never be put into practice. But it was very very interesting to read them!
The book is composed by only seven dialogues between Eugénie (a very young girl) and his teachers of libertinism; the most interesting part is a little pamphlet that is read in one of these dialogues and in which De Sade expresses all his thoughts.
But it is De Sade! So, between the exposure of one thought and another, there are orgies and sodomies and so on. He uses a vulgar language and often blasphemies but it was however a very interesting read.
3/5No English edition, sorry. The title is "Luisa has big tits".
It was a very short and good read. The author is Silvio Donà, a emerging writer I knew in the Italian Group of Goodreads and who has advertised his book. But I have bought his book because I like the way he writes in the group and because I like what he writes. A situation like more or less like with our Kunal Sen: an active member who writes a book and says it to the other members.
The book talks about a 40 years old man who lives a sad life: a sad marriage, a sad job, no passions and suddenly, because of a misunderstood sentence, his life changes.
It is also a funny read though the topic of the book could be sad. It was a good mix of irony in a serious argument.
Smitha wrote: "LOL, what a funny title."Yes, and it was so embarassing to ask for it!
3/5English edition: More Pricks Than Kicks by Samuel Beckett
Beckett is a genius. He writes in a wonderful way. Unfortunately I don't always understood what he was saying; my fault.
Every chapter could be a short story by his own but they all talk about Belacqua, the main character.
I really don't know what to say about this book, it is to read in order to understand. Some chapters were simply wonderful and brillant; others were hard to understand.
I surely will read more by Beckett.
Mod
Smitha wrote: "I too will read something by him. Haven't so far."I don't know if also his other works are like this but look for an edition with a lot of notes.
Mine hadn't and so I am sure I have lost a lot. He used a lot of words (or a sentence) in Italian, in French, in German and in Latin (with this one I had some problems, I don't remember it very well) and I was happy I know all these languages; there were also a lot of references to characters of other literary works, to writers and so on. Here I have lost a lot because I understood only the references to Italian literature as for ex. Dante and his Divine Comedy, Petrarca and so on. There are also some referenes to famous paintings I unfortunately don't know.
2/5No English edition. It is again a short read by an emergent Italian writer.
It was not bad but I had some problems to follow the plot, as if the writer had forgotten to write some pieces of it. But the plot is not important in this book; the most important thing is the poetic language and the writing style of the writer. There was also a stream of consciousness and so the reader went from a poetic language to a stream of consciousness and this in a plot with "missing pieces".
It seems to me as if this book is more a linguistic experiment for the author.
2/5Again a young emergent Italian writer so there is no English edition. The title means "Hubbub".
Nothing special, the life of 5 different people that interwine during one night. So we first meet all these characters and their story and in the last chapter they all come together.
3/5English edition: The Yellow Arrow by Victor Pelevin
It is not a bad read, sometimes interesting and sometimes less interesting. I think that the author had to deepen his thought because it is good.
It talks about people who live on a train, they have there a real life, the only life they know because nobody remembers when they boarded the train and where it goes and the train never stops; sometimes they forget to know that they live on a train and if they remember this they however don't worry.
It is a metaphor for life: we live but we don't know when we "entered" and we don't know where we are going and the worst thing is people who don't worry about it, who never have questions, and so they live as if everything is normal.
Smitha wrote: "sounds interesting!"Yes but it could have been better in my opinion.
Pelevin writes good, I liked his style and the metaphor for life and there was a lot of philosophy and I like this but...I don't know, I felt as if something was missing. At the end of the book there are also two short stories and Pelevin is so nihilistic! I usualy like nihilism but this one was too much also for me :D
Here in Italy he is very rare to find, his books are out of print and so when I went to the secondhand bookshop and saw this book I immediatly bought it. I have taken also Omon Ra by the same author but must still read it.
4,5/5There isn't a identical edition in English but it is a collection with the best stories by Anton Chekhov.
It was really a wonderful book! I liked all the stories but above all:
The lady with the little dog, The Black Monk and Ward no. 6.
I liked Chekhov's language: it is a very simple language but just because of this it is powerful. Everything seems so real and so true. He often leaves the stories without a real end so the reader can imagine whatever he wants. Not always, some stories have an ending, but it happens that some stories are left to the interpretation of the reader.
We can find also Russian life of that period and Chekhov's opinions about politics but above all his opinions about people. Really enjoyable stories!
5/5English edition: And Quiet Flows the Don by Mikhail Sholokhov
Wonderful!
I started the book knowing it was only the first volume of the "epic of the Don", composed by 4 volumes. Now I can't waint to receive the other volumes I could finally find on the internet (in Italy, as usual, the best books are out of print :/).
Also, I started the book knowing it was talking about the Russian Cossacks but I have read about WWI, in the next volumes I will read about the Russian revolution and it is really a huge masterpiece to know important historical events of Russia. Till now I like that Sholokov doesn't judge and doesn't put his opinions in the story or in the characters; he is a neutral observer.
We are introduced in the rural life of the Cossacks of the Don: they have simple life, they live working the land, live in community; but we see also their temper, they are "brothers" but they can be also very cruel and without mercy.
There are wonderful descriptions of the landscape. I don't like long and detailed descriptions, I find them boring. But Sholokov is really good to depict the nature, not too long but not too short or superficial.
I recommend this book to everyone who is interested in historical events. We can see here the point of view of the peasants, torn away from their land in order to go to war for the tsar. But we have also the personal story of the characters.
It is a flowing read, not dragging like War&Peace (at least in my opinion) and I can't wait to receive the other volumes!
Mod
Smitha wrote: "Ive heard a lot about this book. May read it one day."Now I am reading volume 2. It is composed by 4 volumes, roughly 1200/1400 pages in all, but it isn't dragging and though there are a lot of pages it is a pleasant read.
5/5English edition: And Quiet Flows The Don by Mikhail Sholokhov
This is the second volume of the epic of the Don and I have no words to say how much I am loving this book and Sholokhov's style and language.
In this volume we are at the end of WWI but above all we read about the February Revolution and the October Revolution also known as Red October. But we don't read about these important events only from a historical point of view, people of that time were not aware of the importance of what was happening. We live these events from the point of view of the Cossacks who were fighting for the tzar. Now, after the attack of the Winter Palace, a lot of Cossacks decide to join the Red Army and fight with the Bolsheviks. We have Cossacks who fight for the Red Army and Cossacks faithful to the old tradition. It is really touching because both sided are described as ordinary human people: who believed in the new ideals and who didn't want to give away their land and so fight against the Bolsheviks to defend it.
You can't sympathize for one side or the other, both are wrong and right, both kill their brothers for their ideals. I am changing my point of view about the Russian Revolution, this book helps a lot to see events from another point of view.
5/5English edition: And Quiet Flows the Don
This is the third volume of the epic of the Don.
It continues to be wonderful! It never gets boring, Sholokhov is really able to hold the attention of the reader talking about (in this volume) the Russian Civil War, the reds against the whites, alternating it with beautiful descriptions of the landscape near the Don and talking also about the personal stories and the emotions of the characters of the book.
As usual Sholokhov is neutral, there aren't bad or good persons: there are human persons who sometimes do terrible things and other times are kind. Persons who kill old friends and neighbors blinded by their ideals or by anger; but there are also persons who suffer for this war and would like to stay at home because they don't worry nor about the reds nor about the white army. All the characters are well depicted and they are so human in their emotions!
Next volume will be the last! This book has won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1965.
Anbu wrote: "Looks great.. Adding to my list.."If you like historical fiction you will surely like it. And it isn't hard and boring like War&Peace; this one is really a pleasure to read.
You can see the socialist ideals from another point of view, the one of the Cossacks who initially were in the Imperial Guard (before the October Revolution), then they rebelled by their own and later fought in the white army. But you will not find a political book, it is more concentrated on the human emotions during a war. Cossacks were farmers and they fought for their land, they were scared that with the new politic they would have lost their land. They didn't fought for ideals but for their survival. The land was their only sustenance.
I hope you will like it!The complete edition is this one: Quiet Flows the Don, I am reading it in separeted volumes.
It is strange because in the English editions the volumes are put together in a different way and so vol. 1 and 2 are called "Quiet flows the Don" and sometimes you find vol. 3 and 4 with the title The Don Flows Home to the Sea; other times all the 4 volumes are together with the same title. It is confusing but if the book has roughly 1500 pages then it should be the right and complete edition.
dely wrote: "I hope you will like it!The complete edition is this one: Quiet Flows the Don, I am reading it in separeted volumes.
It is strange because in the English editions the volumes are put together in a..."
Cool Dely.. Thanks for the info.. Will be on the look out for this one..
5/5English edition: And Quiet Flows the Don
I finished! This was the fourth and last volume of the epic.
Wonderful! Really, I have no words. In this last chapter the red army wins but people don't live better. A lot of people however accept the new situation because they are tired of all the war; others, above all ex fighters of the white army, are scared to be imprisoned or sentenced to death so they rebel again and try to hide. But these are only groups of bandits, nothing more, though they say to fight for the folk. In all this there is the story of the main character of the whole story and his feelings, his emotions, his fears and his hopes.
It is a must read for people who like historical fiction.
4/5English edition: Memoirs of a Madman by Gustave Flaubert
It was a very short read, nearly 80 pages, but full of philosophy. Flaubert has written these memoirs when he was 17 and he talks about his first (unrequited) love for an elder woman and all his disillusions which brought him to make reflections about life, death, God, the other persons. He felt different from his peers, he had already a poetic soul and he talks also about his loneliness. He sees everything dark, there is no place for dreams or illusions, almost depressiv but I like this.
It is a very good and interesting read.
3/5English edition: Sarrasine by Honoré de Balzac
Another short read by a French author (because I hadn't the book I wanted to read and so I had to fill the time).
The narrator is at a party in Paris, 19th century, in the house of very rich people. There is also an old, quaint man and nobody knows who he is, there is some mistery. A female friend of the narrator asks him to tell her who this weird man is and so they meet the next day and here starts the story about Sarrasine, a sculptor, who went to Italy to learn better his art and in Rome he felt in love with a wonderful woman.
It is a good read, with a surprising ending, so I don't want to add more and it is worth to be read.
5/5English edition: Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman
What a book! There is so much in this book, it is difficult to talk about it. It wasn't an easy read but it was wonderful.
We are in Russia, WWII, siege of Stalingrad, 1942, Hitler against Stalin and we have a lot of characters who are interconnected because relatives or old neighbors. There is fear, hope, love, hate, death, birth. There is a touching letter from a mother to his son; she is old and jew and she was deported. There is a young, jewish mother which hides with other people from German soldiers and her baby starts crying: she suffocates him for the fear of being discovered by the Germans. There is a woman and a boy, deported because jews; she is alone and he is alone and so they stay always together and they will die embraced like mother and son; she could have saved herself because she was a doctor (Nazis didn't kill jews doctors, they could have been useful) but she didn't want to abandon the lonely boy. But there is also an old Russian woman who helps a German soldier who was hurt. There is real love between a German commander and a Russian girl but he couldn't talk of her with nobody. There is a Russian in a German lager and he refuses to help to build a new crematorium, he doesn't want to be partner of this massacre. Also if in a lager he feels free; he is free to decide though he is a prisoner and though he is scared to die but he doesn't want to make something that is wrong.
In all this there is the most important message from the author: the Good doesn't exist, we must believe in Goodness. It is goodness that makes people human, regardless of their nationality or their believes. And people must never stop beeing "man", they must never betray friends or other people or their values only because of the fear of what will happen to them. Honesty and truth are the most important values and at the base there must be humilty.
3,5/5English edition: Goodnight, Mr. Lenin: A Journey Through the End of the Soviet Empire by Tiziano Terzani
I usually love the books by Tiziano Terzani. This is the third I read and I liked it a little bit lesser then the other two. I like his writing because he was a journalist and so he writes in an easy a direct way and induces to a lot of reflections.
In this book he travels on a ship down the river Amur (Russia/China) in the year 1991 and he hears in the radio of the coup to Gorbachev. So, driven by his innate curiosity, he decides to go to Moscow travelling through the states of the Caucasus. In this travel he talks about the ancient history of regions like Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia and Azerbaijan. But Terzani talks also about the impact of the Soviet colonization in these states and it is very interesting, I have learned a lot of things I didn't know. Terzani calls this travel a journey looking for the corpse of Communism.
Suggested to everybody who likes non-fiction and who wants to know more about Russian history.
3,5English edition: The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr by E.T.A. Hoffmann
The book is the autobiography of the tomcat Murr. He is a very intelligent cat, he learns to read and to write and to understand the human language. In this autobiography he talks about his life but there are also deep considerations about life and society.
But...this cat, to write his memoirs, used some sheets on which was written the biography of Kreisler, another character created by Hoffmann. In this way the two biographies overlap and the publisher stamps a book in which the two biographies alternate.
It would have been a good idea by Hoffmann but unfortunately I was not able to understand who was talking, if I was reading the things written by Murr or the ones written by Kreisler. So we don't have Hoffmann's surrealism that I like a lot. It seemed to me that there is only one narrator, the cat.
It is however a good and interesting book, sometimes deep and sometimes funny.
Mod
Smitha wrote: "LOL, dely. Not knowing whether cat or Kriesler? :D"It seemed to me that the only narrator was this cultured cat (and some parts are really funny). But I had read some synopsis and comments to Hoffmann's book and there was written that these two overlapped autobiographies bring to a surrealism that we easily find in other works by Hoffmann (it is also because of this that I like his books). But in Tomcat Murr I couldn't see this surrealism I like so much and it seemed that it was only a autobiography of a cat. It was however a good read but it seems written by only one narrator, Murr.
3,5/5English edition: The Petty Demon by Fyodor Sologub.
The book talks about a teacher who is affected by paranoia: he is sure that everybody wants to harm him.
The paranoia of the main character isn't analyzed in detail, the writer has too much haste and so I was a little bit disappointed by this. The paranoia isn't followed from beginning to the end in its evolution, there is no depth of analysis. The main theme of the book isn't, in my opinion, the paranoia of the main character but the moral corruption of the citizens of the town in which the story develops. The characters are vulgar, ignorant, grotesque and depraved and Sologub succeeds wonderfully to describe flaws and foibles.
1/5English edition: The Situation Is Hopeless But Not Serious by Paul Watzlawick
I have wasted my time with this book. The synopsis was interesting and it seemed a good book but it was a delusion.
It is a sort of self-help but on the other hand; it means that the books tells what to do and how to behave if we want to be unlucky. Of course it should be funny and satirical but my impression was that the author is disrespectful of those who suffer from neurosis, psychosis or other serious pathologies. He makes everything seem so easy: you can be happy only if you want and if you still feel bad it's because you want it this way. If it would be so easy everybody would be happy and healthy. I can't stand such a superficiality.
4/5by Michelle Cohen Corasanti
This is the book I have won with the giveaways of GR.
It was really a good read and I suggest it to everybody!
It talks about the tragic situation among Palestine and Israel. The whole story is told by Ichmad Hamid, the main character, who is 12 years old when the story starts. We follow him from his childhood to his senility, from 1955 to 2009. With him we follow also the history of Palestine and Israel and we follow also all his family.
It is a heart-touching read and it talks about what really happens in the Middle-East.
Here is my full review: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
Smitha wrote: "I would like to read it, then"Watch if it is again in the giveaways. I have seen it listed for more times and it has always 100 copies. Perhaps it's because of this that I won!
2/5English edition: A True Story: Parallel English and Greek by Lucian of Samosata
I don't know how to call this book: fantasy? The narrator talks about a trip done with his ship. They start the journey, the wind brings them up to the sky, on the moon; there is a battle between inhabitants of the moon and the one of the sun; then they go away and turn back on the sea (on earth) and the whole ship is swallowed by a giant whale and they live there for one year. Then the journey continues out of the whale and so on and so on.
It is a funny read and very very short but I couldn't appreciate it a lot: first because it has a lot of references to Greek mythology, Greek writers and philosophers and I don't know them so I have lost most of the allusions and the subtle irony; second, the book has more than 50 pages of introduction and critical review and it was really too much! I have started the story that I was already tired and bored.
My last book of 2012!
Mod
Smitha wrote: "wish you got something better as the last read of the year, since you've rated it only 2 stars"It's not a big problem. I had only two days to the end of the year and I couldn't start a long book without ending it before the end of the year. This one was very short and I knew I could end it.
I know, it sounds strange but I am not able to start a book and drag it in the new year :/ I must finish a book on 31th december and start a new book the 1th january. Where are the psychiatrists of the group?
Report of the year:
- 51 books read
- 14'355 pages
- longest book: Shantaram
- 5 stars: 8 books
4 stars: 14 books
3 stars: 20 books
2 stars: 7 books
1 star: 2 books
Mod
Indian Readers
Books mentioned in this topic
Il placido Don, Vol 1 (other topics)Shantaram (other topics)
A True Story: Parallel English and Greek (other topics)
Storia vera (other topics)
The Almond Tree (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Lucian of Samosata (other topics)Michelle Cohen Corasanti (other topics)
Paul Watzlawick (other topics)
Fyodor Sologub (other topics)
E.T.A. Hoffmann (other topics)
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You must try!
Now you can say: if dely did it, I can it twice and bet..."
This book is there in my to-read list.. Will definitely take this up one day.. :)