2009

Summary

Colette in January, May and December. The Pure and Impure is surely Colette at her most difficult. The Claudine stories are the most fun. In between is Cheri and The Gentle Libertine. What sets her apart for me is how she surprises, delivers a pleasant shock, a twist usually on conventional morality. Throughout her work, she makes no apologies for treating romance as the most important thing in life. Similarly, everything Bolano does, even the Juarez murders, is about how writing is everything. Enjoyed By Night in Chile, but 2666 and The Savage Detectives are masterpieces. Saramago's History of the Siege of Lisbon is a cleverly disguised and charming love story. Goodbye to a River is the first John Graves I've read, and I understand why he's admired. He makes a distinction throughout between himself and the common folk, and how that relates to his view of the land. There's a good line I don't remember where he places himself as part common folk and part not, and implied in all of it is a struggle, as the land and the people change, with the idea of authenticity. The Surrender was a disappointment. Might have made a good essay. The Almond was ten times better, tho it too seemed a bit padded at times. Whatever the faults of the books, though, both women value sexuality in a way similar to Colette, as does Edna O'Brien in The Country Girls Trilogy. Anita Brookner is another story. It could be argued that both novels I read were also about women and their sexuality, and how that in turn relates to their places in society, but it seemed a bit cool to me. I became impatient with the reticence of her lead characters. I enjoyed the Hungarian, S., but Rushdie and Pamuk seem false to me. Both try too hard in my opinion. All the Japanese novels except the comedy, Singular Rebellion, share a haiku-like aesthetic that I admire and find appealing. Mishima can be fascinating in one novel and dull as dirt in another.

December

Colette, The Gentle Libertine
Bolano, Roberto, By Night in Chile
Auster, Paul, Man in the Dark
Mori, Ogai, The Wild Geese
Kawabata, Yasunari, The Snow Country

November

Graves, John, Goodbye to a River
Nooteboom, Cees, The Following Story
Gombrowicz, Witold, Pornografia
Nedjma, The Almond



October

Simenon, Georges, Inspector Cadaver
O'Brien, Edna, The Country Girls Trilogy
Brookner, Anita, Hotel du Lac; The Misalliance

September

Bolano, Roberto, 2666
Bentley, Toni, The Surrender

August

Maruya, Saiichi, Singular Rebellion
Mishima, Yukio, Runaway Horses*
Mishima, Yukio, The Sound of Waves

June and July

Mishima, Yukio, The Banquet
Marai, Sandor, Embers (similar to The Leopard)
Garcia Marquez, Gabriel, Chronicle of a Death Foretold
Holyroyd, Michael, A Strange Eventful History (couldn't finish)

May

Colette, Claudine at School, in Paris, Married, and Annie (charmed by)

April

Spark, Muriel, Reality and Dreams (kind of thing I like a lot when reading, then forget quickly)
Skvorecky, Josef, The Engineer of Human Souls
Highsmith, Patricia, Eleven

March

Madame de Lafayette, The Princesse de Cleves
Sijie, Dai, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
Skvorecky, Josef, Two Murders in my Double Life


January and February in Santa Barbara

Colette, Cheri, The Last of Cheri, The Pure and the Impure, Earthly Paradise and The Complete Stories.
Saramago, Blindness, The Cave, The History of the Siege of Lisbon
Pamuk, Orhan, My Name is Red*
Rushdie, Salman, Midnight's Children*
Mantel, Hilary,

* didn't finish.