Day Three Hundred and Forty Two
I’d expected more book recommendations on my post a couple days back. Now is the time people to suggest that book you think I should read. I think everyone is well aware of where not to go (The Shack, the Twilight series…) but I really am open to some suggestions. Just so you know it’s ok to go non-highbrow, I will be reading the last three books of the Harry Potter series…
I finished Narayan’s Mr. Sampath – The Printer of Malgudi and read The Financial Expert yesterday. Both were great. Now, when I counted my list out at the beginning of the year Mr Sampath was counted as two because I misread the hyphen as a comma. I don’t feel bad though, Rabbit Angstrom, Joan Didion and Kahlil Gibran were collectively under-counted by, like 14.
Narayan has a couple of interesting stylistic quirks. He will often shift forward several years chronologically, right in the middle of a chapter and without giving any overt textual clues. This is slightly disorienting but I haven’t found it off-putting. He also sets all of his books in the town of Malgudi, leaving one curious how much of the cultural detail is merely local. However it also makes it possible to absorb more in fewer words since he doesn’t have to re-orient your geography. Narayan is very short on explanations. He uses Indian-English words without defining them (yay for Wikipedia!) and assumes the reader’s familiarity with Indian custom and religion. I like being treated like I’m smart, even if it leaves me reaching for the dictionary. I have one, so no worries.
December 9th, 2008 at 9:57 am
Gaiman’s cool. His short story collections are great. It’s worth getting his audiobooks if you like that sort of thing because he narrates them himself and they sound great.
Junot Diaz’ ‘The Brief and Wondrous life of Oscar Wao’ is a fantastic read that I’d recommend to anyone.
I’m reading 2666 by Roberto Bolano at present and it’s a beautiful and yet desolate book, a stunning read, immensely addictive and readable.
Susanna Clarke’s ‘Jonathon Strange and Mr Norrell’ is a long yet wonderful read, well worth the time investment.
I’ll think about some others and get back to you.
Rich