Notes

Miscellaneous
- Milorad Pavić died this week. Go read Dictionary of the Khazars. It remains one of the most original books I've ever read. The "story" is told via encyclopedia entries, with many of the same entries being reworked in each of the 3 major sections — Christianity, Islam, and Judaism — the mystery being to which of the religions did the Khazar people convert. There was a time when the problem of translation greatly fascinated me, and I worried over whether it would be better to change an entry heading and risk deviating from the very right word in order to preserve the alphabetical order of the original or to change the order of the entries in compliance with the target language but thereby tainting the impact of the proper unfolding of the narrative. In Krakow I came across a Polish version, which I treasure for its binding. I spent some time comparing translations, but I arrived at no conclusions.

- Which quite interesting dead person are you?

- Fabulous video of printing and bookbinding.

- International science fiction this month at Words without Borders. Includes work by Stanisław Lem and about Stanisław Lem. I've scheduled this issue as next week's lunchtime reading.

- The Doctor Who 2009 Christmas Adventure Calendar! Although, sadly, some treats are not available in my area.

Books I haven't said much about
- The Geographer's Library, by Jon Fasman. Don't bother. This review says it all.

- Geek Love, by Katherine Dunn. Weird and wonderful and really touching, provided you have a weird sense of humour and can get past all the freakshow stuff.

- Generosity, by Richard Powers. It's ages since I read this already, and I still don't know what to say about it. Wonderful premise, and worth talking about. But as to the question of happiness, its essence, other recent reads have handled this with more passion and guts (namely The Museum of Innocence, by Orhan Pamuk).

- The Confessions of Max Tivoli, by Andrew Sean Greer. I read this back in the spring and loved it. Very poignant. Much like the movie of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, in plot and mood.

- Platform, Michel Houellebecq. Houellebecq is very provocative and challenges my comfort zone. I quite liked Platform (I read it in March) and found the characters more mature (read: morally acceptable) than in the other couple novels of his I'd read. I think I have more to say on this book yet. I find myself rather hoping that Houellebecq has something new out soon.

Books I plan to read soon
- The Magic Mountain, by Thomas Mann. Under way; stay tuned.

- The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami. Because one day I was in a bookstore and I felt like buying a book, and I've been meaning for a couple years to look this one up, so I took a look and it just felt right, really right.

- The Glass Room, by Simon Mawer. Review copy.

- The Last Supper, by Paweł Huelle. I'd read about 100 pages when I realized I had no idea what was going on. A little too frenetic for the headspace I've been living in of late. But I'll come back to it in short order.

- The Book of Fathers, by Miklós Vámos. Review copy.

- The Invention of Morel, by Adolfo Bioy Casares. Because it was cited by Roberto Bolaño as a book that marked his life. Plus I had trouble stopping after reading the first paragraph. (You can read the introduction for yourself.)

- Shades of Grey, by Jasper Fforde. Advance reading copy, of the US colorized version (ie, edited for spelling and I know not what else). Can't wait actually. I could use a little levity.

The stack

Pictured in random order, but described in a particular order according to a logic I couldn't possibly begin to explain to anyone.

(I've already actually read a couple of these, but they're still in the stack as books I have to contend with (write about, shelve, pass on to someone else). It may not look like much of a stack, but it's enough to make me feel daunted — I've gotten pretty good at not acquiring books I don't actually mean to read fairly immediately. Sure, I have a shelf of book I haven't gotten to in years, but I do my best not to let it grow.)

The Locust and the Bird: My Mother's Story, by Hanan Al-Shaykh. This was a review copy and I'm not sure why I accepted it because it didn't sound like the sort of thing I would ordinarily read. But! It was captivating! I was not familiar with the author's name, but apparently she's quite revered for her short stories. I was a bit put off by the prologue, which sets up how this book came to be; there was a lot of ego (both Hanan's and her mother's) and little humility. But I guess it speaks to the author's skill that she took me past that and so convincingly channeled her mother's story, about growing up as a woman, and a free-spirited one, in Lebanon in the middle of the last century, with fairy-tale-like exuberance. (Here's a great review.)

The Mystery Guest: An Account, by Grégoire Bouillier. Along with the Greene and Mann below, these are books I ordered for myself just because I really wanted them, and I'd put it off long enough. (The trailer for this book is among the first I ever saw, and still my favourite.) It's a kind of memoir, about a guy who overthinks the significance of every single social gesture or nongesture, particularly as relating to the girl who dumped him with no explanation (I'd've dumped him too). See this review for more details. The book is charming and funny, even while the narrator is a bit of a weenie. At 132 pages it makes for a great read on a rainy Sunday afternoon (which it did this past weekend, between turkey cooking and card-playing).

The End of the Affair, by Graham Greene. I hear it's devastatingly good, and I quite liked Brighton Rock this past summer.

The Magic Mountain, by Thomas Mann. This is my own personal next project as a close and careful read, or as much like it as I can muster. I've been wanting to get to it for some time, as I myself have a tale of a magic mountain. I've been even more keen on Mann since coming across (via Maud Newton) this quotation from a 1955 interview:

The basic theme on which I've tried to play all my variations is the problem of the artist, the contrast between the excitement of beauty and the demands of life; between, if you will, the ab- or super-normal poetic vision and the normal necessity of catching the eight o'clock bus. My theme is also the paradox that the vision could never live without the opposing necessity since it must be inspired by it.

Geek Love, by Katherine Dunn. I picked this up at our fundraising book sale at work. I'm certain some bloggers have raved about this book in the past, but I can't remember who. Was it you?

Wake, by Robert J Sawyer. I won this book about a week ago (and so far, this is the best reason I can figure to join Twitter: the contests). I find Sawyer has his ups and downs; the ideas in his novels can be awesome, but the writing at times brings it down. In some books, the dialogue was hopeless, and the characterization of women and relationships was less then believable; but he fares better than many genre writers. I've read a few chapters already — while I'm not convinced that Sawyer has the voice of a 15-year-old girl down, the story has a cool concept and I do want to know how it turns out.

The Museum of Innocence, by Orhan Pamuk. To be released October 20. I have a review copy. For which I am dropping everything. First sentence: "It was the happiest moment of my life, thought I didn't know it."