Gird your loins for September because I can't recommend this book highly enough. It spans two millennia from 1012 and the decline of the Maya, to 2012Gird your loins for September because I can't recommend this book highly enough. It spans two millennia from 1012 and the decline of the Maya, to 2012 where a woman visits a cave in Belize, to 3012 with a religion based on some of the previous stories and humanity in an evolved state. Everything intertwines and the ending is glorious.
I got a chance to read it early because I've long been a Patreon supporter of the author, and I will be sending this copy on to the next patron and ordering myself a hardcover. If you're intrigued, check out her debut novel while you wait, The Girl in the Road....more
This book has had my complete attention every spare minute of the last week, and I was absorbed from page 1 to page 944. A family saga that starts witThis book has had my complete attention every spare minute of the last week, and I was absorbed from page 1 to page 944. A family saga that starts with the four daughters of a Georgian chocolatier, through wars and revolutions and generations. That's the country of Georgia, which I knew almost nothing about.
I always say I find my best reads on the long but not shortlists of awards and this is no exception (longlisted for the International Booker) - any other books I've picked up while reading this have paled in comparison.
I had copy from the publisher through Edelweiss but it took me a while to get to it. It came out April 14, 2020....more
This might be the best book I've read all year. It's about refugees, lost children, memory, family, and what can truly be captured about a place or moThis might be the best book I've read all year. It's about refugees, lost children, memory, family, and what can truly be captured about a place or moment in time. Personal connections abound - sound capture, archival boxes, Steven Feld, marriage, so much that goes deep and I'll be thinking about for some time.
Here I will place some random quotations, for now.
"Our mothers teach us to speak, and the world teaches us to shut up."
"The thing about living with someone is that even though you see them every day and can predict all their gestures in a conversation, even when you can read intentions behind their actions and calculate their responses to circumstances fairly accurately, even when you are sure there's not a single crease in them left unexplored, even then, one day, the other can suddenly become a stranger."
"Conversations, in a family, become linguistic archaeology."
"I want to, but I know better. With men like this one, I know I'd play the role of lonely hunter; and they, the role of inaccessible prey. And I'm both too old and too young to pursue things that walk away from me."
"Perhaps it is in those stretched-out moments in which they meet the world in silence that our children begin to grow apart from us."
"Children force parents to go out looking for a specific pulse, a gaze, a rhythm, the right way of telling the story, knowing that stories don't fix anything or save anyone but maybe make the world both more complex and more tolerable. And sometimes, just sometimes, more beautiful. Stories are a way of subtracting the future from the past, the only way of finding clarity in hindsight."
I finished this five days ago and still can't even wrap my head around expressing how much meaning it holds for me. ...more
This book has come up multiple times in conversation in the last year so I decided to get it from the library. This will be a book I will buy to keep This book has come up multiple times in conversation in the last year so I decided to get it from the library. This will be a book I will buy to keep in my collection, to pull off the shelf and read bits of when I'm having a rough time. I actually wish I had it a couple of years ago when things really did fall apart for a while. More typically, life is full of moments where minor things go wrong, when you get angry or sad about a particular situation, or when you get bogged down with the shoulds. This book addresses the bigger difficulties as well as the daily ones.
“To stay with that shakiness - to stay with a broken heart, with a rumbling stomach, with the feeling of hopelessness and wanting to get revenge - that is the path of true awakening. Sticking with that uncertainty, getting the knack of relaxing in the midst of chaos, learning not to panic - this is the spiritual path.”
Despite the fact that I'm proclaiming I will buy this right away, I still am giving it only four stars. I am not Buddhist and don't have a glossary of Buddhist lingo in my head. I struggled in some chapters with remembering the meanings of some of those words, and it interrupted the flow for me. I would rather have had the ideas presented in simple language than feel like I was being Instructed in Buddhist Precepts (and that there would be a quiz at the end.)
The general concepts boil down to that we can learn to live with discomfort, with pain, with dark times, because they are a part of life. And if we can be compassionate with ourselves we will be able to pay more attention to our own thoughts and feelings, while also extending it outward to other people and our community. If that's Buddhism, sign me up. :)...more
While his narrative poems are not my favorite, re-reading the poetry in this collected volume made me incredibly happy, soothed, and full. I need to oWhile his narrative poems are not my favorite, re-reading the poetry in this collected volume made me incredibly happy, soothed, and full. I need to own it.
Two writers meet at a workshop, and continue to correspond after. This story is told entirely in letters, and the author pulls you in to their thoughtTwo writers meet at a workshop, and continue to correspond after. This story is told entirely in letters, and the author pulls you in to their thoughts and emotions so deeply, so intimately, that it is impossible not to feel! I found it gut-wrenching. Love between friends doesn't always go smoothly, and can't always manifest in traditional ways. That's the story here. Something happens halfway through that turns everything on its ear (something I was not expecting or even needing to have enough drama in the story) but the letters reveal how the friends work through it.)
Apparently the author based it very loosely on the relationship between Flannery O'Connor and Robert Lowell, but I don't know anything about that! I plan to read O'Connor's stories later this year, so perhaps I'll read some Lowell too.
"I wonder if I should have even described this to you, if I have scared you. But I imagine knowing you for a long, long time, and I have felt this blackness for a long, long time, and I don't want to hide any part of my self from you." (Bernard to Frances)
"She may always think harder than she loves." (Bernard to his friend Ted, about Frances)
"If we say we love each other, what does it matter? It does not mean that we have to marry each other. It means only that we need each other, that we look out for each other. That our lives without each other would be less." (Bernard to Frances)
"I want you to feel hope more than you feel despair." (Frances to Bernard)
"I see him too clearly to be in love with him." (Frances to her friend Claire, about Bernard)
"I am trying to look at you with love but without illusions. I love your suspicion..." (Bernard to Frances)...more
I re-read this play every other year or so, it just never stops having meaning for me. I first went to a performance of it in college, and I went backI re-read this play every other year or so, it just never stops having meaning for me. I first went to a performance of it in college, and I went back the night after, and the night after that. I couldn't get enough!
I think the theme that resonates with me the most, and the reasons change, is that of relationships with others. Can you ever be known? Are you always alone?
"I have ceased to believe in my own personality"
"What is the reality of experience between two unreal people?" ...more
How could I have never reviewed this book? I read this at a key turning point in my life, and was one of those books that changed everything for me. IHow could I have never reviewed this book? I read this at a key turning point in my life, and was one of those books that changed everything for me. I was 22. I had gotten married and gone directly to graduate school right after graduating with a BA in music, with a full ride and graduate assistantship in the School of Folklore at Indiana University. It wasn't a good fit for me. By the time I enrolled in the fieldwork class, I knew I was probably on my way out, and got permission to do my fieldwork assignments in restaurant kitchens. The culinary-school trained cooks in the restaurant commanded me to read this book when I was still just observing and volunteering (I later worked there until I moved away), and it solidified my love for an industry that I was already excited by because of my experiences.
Anthony Bourdain may seem a bit extreme, but his tales of what really goes on in restaurants and among cooks is not that far off from my own experiences. Ask me to tell you about the time I slammed the head waiter's head in the fridge door, or ask for a kitchen-scar tour of my body. Once you are immersed in that world, it changes you. I loved it. I loved the rush, the thrill, the creativity, the challenge. I feel like Bourdain's memories are my memories. I may love him as a TV personality and a guest actor in my dreams, but this is where I love him the most. ...more
This is a new author to pay attention to. Glaciers is brief (my only complaint is I wanted more) but I realized I was feeling every emotion along withThis is a new author to pay attention to. Glaciers is brief (my only complaint is I wanted more) but I realized I was feeling every emotion along with Isabel, whose story jumps around between present day and her childhood in Alaska and beyond. The reason I brought it home from the library at all was that the main character worked in libraries, but it exceeded my expectations, even just in the character alone. You will want to experience it for yourself. I think I'll read it again before I return it....more
How have I never written a review for this book until now? I have read this every few years since the beginning of my paranoid education at the age ofHow have I never written a review for this book until now? I have read this every few years since the beginning of my paranoid education at the age of 11 or 12, when my Dad handed me Animal Farm, shortly followed by 1984.
Except I'm not so sure I should call it a paranoid education anymore. How much of 1984 has become descriptive of our current society? Dear NSA, this is for you:
"There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time.... You had to live - did live, from habit that became instinct - in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard...."
*cough*
No, I mean, everything is all right, I love Big Brother.
We'll be discussing this on SFF Audio, or in Orwell's words, "in the solemn foolery of a 'discussion group.'" When that posts, I'll link to it!...more
This book changed my religious experience, and then I got to have lunch with the author. I can't even put it into words.This book changed my religious experience, and then I got to have lunch with the author. I can't even put it into words....more
I would give this book 10 stars if I could. I wish it was twice as long. It has a beautiful introduction full of thoughts on travel and what it is thaI would give this book 10 stars if I could. I wish it was twice as long. It has a beautiful introduction full of thoughts on travel and what it is that draws people to remote places. The majority of the book is two-page segments where the island's map is on one side and the other has basic information on it (when it was "discovered," how many people inhabit it, important moments in its history) as well as a narrative. That was my favorite part. It might have a legend, a historical moment, a discovery, or its destruction.
Who could forget St. Kilda and the babies that wouldn't live past eight days old? Christmas Island with its bright red migrating crabs? I sat and read the descriptions and looked up more photos online of these places and dreamed. Sign me up!
"Maps tell us much more when they do not divide nature into nations; when they allow it to form the basis of comparison across all the borders made by man."
"Any point on the infinite globe of the Earth can become a centre."
"Paradise may be an island. But it is hell too."
"An island offers a stage: everything that happens on it is practically forced to turn into a story, into a chamber piece in the middle of nowhere, into the stuff of literature."
"Give me an atlas over a guidebook any day. There is no more poetic book in the world." Amen, sister....more
I had to go through quite an interlibrary loan ordeal to track this volume down after learning about it from the Dylan Thomas Prize longlist, and now I had to go through quite an interlibrary loan ordeal to track this volume down after learning about it from the Dylan Thomas Prize longlist, and now I feel slightly foolish because I want to own it. Only 11 libraries in the world have it at the date of this review, and the library that loaned it sent it to me for *one week only.* It is available for purchase online, but maybe the volume is just new and slightly obscure.
I hope not for long! Of all the poets nominated for the Dylan Thomas Prize, Adebe D.A. is something special. I just get this sense that she will become an important voice, or rather, is becoming an important voice. It is hard for me to quantify why, exactly. Some of the poems resonated with me, particularly "New York, My Future Love," "Colour Lessons," and "I Am Not Cleopatra." Perhaps it is because it feels like she isn't just writing about what she has observed, she is writing about what she has experienced, and there is such a difference really. There is a certain feeling of personal ambiguity, about race, and genders and expectations, that I identify with, and felt myself nodding or laughing in agreement or response.
These deserve to be heard, not just read. "For it is with eyes unveiled that I have learned this music of deepest understanding." ...more
Valente is an amazing writer, and these poems weave together mythology and fantasy, relationships and fearlessness. I had to read them out loud, just Valente is an amazing writer, and these poems weave together mythology and fantasy, relationships and fearlessness. I had to read them out loud, just to feel the words spoken. Amazing. My favorites were Apocrypha, Gingerbread, Still Life with Wicked Stepmother, Music of a Proto-Suicide, Algorithm for Finding the Shortest Path Between Two Points, and Cardinales Virtutes. ...more
I took breaks from this book throughout the day, because it was SO GOOD that I didn't want it to end. No, really. I rarely feel that way, but apparentI took breaks from this book throughout the day, because it was SO GOOD that I didn't want it to end. No, really. I rarely feel that way, but apparently, that is the experience I'm looking for when I open a novel. This is a novelized set of short stories tied together by the history of a newspaper and its demise, and each chapter focuses on a figure related to the paper. Sometimes the chapter/story would end and I'd find that all of the sudden, I felt deep compassion for these fictional characters, and I was sad to see each of them go despite/because of their quirks and bad choices. Rachman is a powerful storyteller and I can't believe this is his first novel!...more
Anything I say about this book just will not do it justice. It can't describe how I found myself holding my breath at writing that felt so intimate, aAnything I say about this book just will not do it justice. It can't describe how I found myself holding my breath at writing that felt so intimate, almost like I shouldn't be reading it. Completely immersive and beautiful and disturbing and I can't wait to go back and read everything else she has written.
Kind of like if Jeanette Winterson and Neil Gaiman wrote a book together, after reading The Pillow Book.
I hadn't heard of Valente yet, and only read her because this book was nominated for the Hugo for 2010. I hope it wins, definitely my favorite of the six....more
The first thing I did when I finished this book was to go back to the beginning, then to re-read the parts I had marked. I'm sure it will be one of myThe first thing I did when I finished this book was to go back to the beginning, then to re-read the parts I had marked. I'm sure it will be one of my favorites for the rest of my life. The prose is beautiful (I found myself stopping to read some of it out loud), the characters are interesting, and I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the Alexandria Quartet. ...more
Jenny (Reading Envy)
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