Top Ten Authors Who Deserve More Recognition

Posted on July 16, 2013 by christinasr

I’ve been taking a break from Top Ten Tuesday, in part because I haven’t been blogging, but also because the topics haven’t felt right for me or my blog. At times, the topics are very ya focused and I don’t read a lot of ya so these topics don’t speak that much to me. However, this Tuesday the theme is authors who deserve more recognition and I love that. I like being giving the opportunity to praise authors whom I love but nobody else does (it’s a bit silly since I can praise them every day on this blog but nevermind. Today is the day.) As always, the Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.

Joyce Carol Oates. I know Joyce Carol Oates might seem like a odd choice but for some reason, it seems to me that she is not regarded as highly as her (male) colleagues John Updike, Philip Roth and others. I don’t know if this is in any way gender related and I’m not going to claim that’s why but I do think it’s wrong that she’s not mentioned when people talk about the Nobel prize for instance – like Roth is every year. I’m not saying Roth doesn’t deserve the praise – he blows me away when I read him – but I love Oates and she deserves just as much praise and as many accolades.
Georges Perec. I’ve only read Life – a User’s Manual by Perec and it’s a strange novel, detailing the lives of the people living in an apartment building in Paris. I loved it so much. Perec has both written a novel without using the letter ‘e’ and a novel where ‘e’ is the only vowel used. I really want to read more by him because he’s is such a strange and fascinating author and I definitely think he deserves a lot more recognition while at the same time I admit that he’s not for everyone.
Mark Helprin. Maybe I am speaking more for the recognition of the novel Winter’s Tale than Mark Helprin. Winter’s Tale is just such an amazingly wonderful and lyrical novel that is simply an experience I would hate to have been without. I don’t know much about Mark Helprin otherwise – I think maybe he’s a Republican Governor or something but this is not felt in his work. And I appreciate that. Too much politic can ruin a novel. I found this book unread in a secondhand bookstore and I had never heard of the book or author before that so I want to encourage everyone to read this one.
Félix J. Palma. For a wild ride, Palma is your guy. Light sci fi elements, fictional and real characters co-mingling, great story telling. The Map of Time lived completely up to my expectations and was just such a great thrilling ride. I can’t wait to read the follow up novel, The Map of the Sky.
Donna Tartt. Donna Tartt is a very slow writer who have only published two books so far (the third one coming out later this year). I’ve read both The Secret History and The Little Friend and really enjoyed them both. I’m really looking forward to her next novel and hopes that it is as great as the first two. So please try her out.
Jack Vance. I see a lot of readers and bloggers enjoying retelling of fairy tales and for people who enjoys these, Vance’s Lyonesse series is one not to miss. It’s a wonderful wonderful series of three novels with princes and princesses, lost lovers, lost children, fairies, wars, intrigue and everything a fairy tale lover enjoys. It’s really a beautiful book, all three volumes of it, and I loved it. Vance is also a sci fi writer and I really want to explore these as well.
Steven Hall. Hall is the author of one novel, I think, The Raw Shark Texts which is an incredibly imaginative novel about a man who has lost his memory but keeps receiving letters from himself. A man on the run from a mysterious word shark – who even appears on the pages. A book that plays with both the story and the way it’s told in ways which resembles the ways Jonathan Safran Foer plays. Highly, highly recommended.

So that was 7 authors you should give some love. Finally, three authors I need to read more. Authors, that for some reason or other I don’t read enough.

Gabriel García Márquez. I loved Love in the Time of Cholera and have bought One Hundred Years of Solitude. But I haven’t read any else. And I can’t explain why. So he’s on my list of authors I need to dedicate more time too.
Margaret Atwood. I have read and loved two of Atwood’s books, Alias Grace and The Handmaid’s Tale. But for some reason, even though the blurbs to her books always sound fascinating, I never get around to actually reading more by her. I really, really need to do so!
José Saramago. I looooved Blindness. I really really did. It was such a great novel. Since I have been keeping an eye out for Saramago, adding titles to my wish list – but I haven’t bought or read another novel by him. I need to fix that too!

So that was my Top Ten for this week. Have I convinced you to read any of them? Do you agree with me about the authors I need to pay more attention to? (Don’t worry – the list doesn’t stop there…!)

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June 2012 – Monthly Wrap Up post

Posted on July 2, 2012 by christinasr

So with June gone, we’re halfway through the year and it’s time to do not only a monthly wrap-up post but take a look at the first 6 months and see how far I’ve come in my goals for the year. In total, I’ve read 26 books which is one every week and exactly half of my goal of 52 books – so right on target with that one. Of the 25 books I’ve decided to read this list, I’ve read 12 which is pretty much on target too. So I just need to basically repeat this in the second half of the year.

I also want to talk about Armchair BEA, an online book blogger award that took place early June. For four days, bloggers socialized, talked about books and visited each others blog and discussed the many facets of book blogging. I met some fascinating new people, found great new blogs and had a great time. Although I haven’t changed anything on the blog after BEA, I certainly got a lot to think about as well as some new inspiration – and got more certain about some of the things I do. Maybe I will add some new features or change things up a bit at a later point, for now I’m pretty much satisfied with things as they are. I highly recommend anyone to join Armchair BEA if it is held again next year.

I’ve read 1794 pages this month which is a bit of an improvement on the last couple of months but still not quite where I want it to be. I made it through 4 books which is okay but again, I really would like to read 2000+ pages and at least 5 books.

Haruki Murakami: Underground. Murakami’s take on the 1995 terror attack in the Tokyo subway. Interviews with victims and with members of the cult who did it. All together, they give an interesting view into terrorist attacks in general and the Japanese psyche in specific. 4 stars.
Mark Helprin: Winter’s Tale. The fourth book added to my favorites shelf this year! (The other three were We Need to Talk about Kevin, Drood and The Woman in White.) Such an amazing book – Peter Lake, Beverly Penn, Athansor and all the other fantastic characters that you can’t help fall in love with. Bigger than life characters, beautiful language, great story – all set in a mythical New York. It’s a great, great book. 5 stars.
Daniel Defoe: Moll Flanders. I’m sorry to admit that these novels about ‘fallen women’ from the 18th century isn’t really working for me. Still, it’s an interesting read this story of Moll Flander’s life, several marriages and children, criminal career and prison time. 3 stars.
Salman Rushdie: Shalimar the Clown. Amazing story about Shalimar, his wife Boonyi, Max Ophuls the American ambassador to India, and Max and Boonyi’s daughter India … It’s also about Kashmir, the relationship between muslims and hindus – and it’s such a great read! 4 stars.

Even though I feel like I worked hard with Clarissa this month, I haven’t finished the June letters yet. I have read more than half of them though, and at the moment, I’m enjoying them very much. Expect my Clarissa read-along post in a few days.

I finished the Haruki Murakami challenge – since I had only signed up to read one book by Murakami this year, this challenge was finished the moment I closed Underground. I do hope that I will have time to read more Murakami this year, time to read some of his fiction. All in all, I’m feeling on target with all my challenges.

So in July, I’m going to spend time watching Tour de France and reading about it, as I’ve already mentioned. I think I can read through the three books rather quickly and after that, I’m not quite sure what I want to continue with but I probably need to focus a bit on books for my challenge, maybe the two last volumes in the Earth Children’s series by Jean M. Auel, The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley or The Message to the Planet by Iris Murdoch. I hope to get a lot of reading done in June to stay on track!

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Mark Helprin: Winter’s Tale (review)

Posted on June 12, 2012 by christinasr

When I buy books nowadays, it’s always books where I either know the book or the author. If I’m at a bookstore and find a book I don’t know, I always check it out at goodreads before I buy it. But still, it’s very rarely that I walk into a bookstore and find a book where I’ve never heard of either author or book. In the town where I live, we have a small book cafe where they sell used books. I rarely visit there – in fact, I have only been there about five times. One of these times, I saw a book that looked interesting. I didn’t buy it but I went home and looked it up. What I found out, intrigued me so much that I went back, walked straight up to it, took it and paid the very small amount it costed. 50 Dkr – about 8,5 USD. I have never heard of the title or the author before but I’m so happy that I visited that book store and bought that book. Trying not to sound corny, but it was just the perfect book for me.

The book was Winter’s Tale. The author was Mark Helprin. And the book is beautiful, lyrical, poetic, almost like a fairy tale – just amazing. It’s one of those books where you don’t feel like any words you write will or can do it justice but where you just want to shout out to people ‘read this!’.

The story is set in a mythic and fictionalized New York City at both the beginning and the end of the twentieth century. It centers around Peter Lake and the Penn family, especially his love, Beverly Penn. Peter Lake is a burglar from when burglars were still honorable. While breaking into a house, he meets Beverly Penn, an heiress. They fall in love even though she’s dying from consumption. Their love is the thing giving meaning to all of Peter Lake’s life, a life so fantastic and amazing that … well, you just have to read this book yourself.

And we must not forget Athansor, the huge white horse. Every scene featuring Athansor is heartbreaking, beautiful, touching. Athansor is a sort of protector for Peter Lake, a horse with incredible powers. He can run and jump faster and longer than any other horse and, oh yeah, he can fly. There are some harsh scenes that will be nasty to read for any horse lover but the beauty of Athansor is well worth the heartbreaking scenes.

This is one of those books where after you’ve read it, you read other reviews because the plot is so complex and enchanting that you’re looking for a way to summarize it without giving too much away but also, without just writing some nonsense which tells nothing about the book at all but makes it sound boring and uninteresting. I’m really not sure how to sum up the novel because there’s so much content in it and the complexity of the storyline is incredible. So that’s why I went looking for someone who could sum up this novel – without finding it. It’s something that must be felt, I think.

The writing in this novel is part of it’s attractiveness. Overall, it’s just beautiful. I could post any number of quotes, attesting to the gorgeousness that is Helprin’s writing. But since I always write very long reviews, I thought I’d tackle two things at once and show how he writes and choose a quote that talks about something else I want to address. Since this novel involves people sort of traveling in time – at least existing across quite a lot of time, Helprin of course has to address the matter of time.

‘If nothing is random, and everything is predetermined, how can there be free will? The answer to that is simple. Nothing is predetermined; it is determined, or was determined, or will be determined. No matter, it all happened at once, in less than an instant, and time was invented because we cannot comprehend in one glance the enormous and detailed canvas that we have been given – so we track it, in linear fashion, piece by piece. Time, however, can be easily overcome; not by chasing the light, but by standing back far enough to see it all at once. The universe is still and complete. Everything that ever was, is; everything that ever will be, is – and so on, in all possible combinations. Though in perceiving it we imagine that it is in motion, and unfinished, it is quite finished and quite astonishingly beautiful. In the end, or, rather, as things really are, any event, no matter how small, is intimately and sensibly tied to all others.’ (p. 401-402)

So all time exists at the same time, if you can even say that. We are only to see one part of the time but people like Peter Lake, Beverly Penn and others are capable of more. They have a completely other vision of the universe than ordinary humans, they are larger than life characters and they live in a novel where time, life and death, love and divine beings are making humans capable of more than they thought. It’s about the limits of human experience and unlimited love. It’s an amazing metaphysical novel that has been put on my favorite shelf immediately after finishing.

There is so much more in this novel that I haven’t touched upon. Characters that will make you love them or break your heart. Peter Lake, Beverly Penn and Athansor will stay with any reader for a long time. Whenever you look up at a starry sky, you’ll try to see what Beverly Penn saw – and ultimately, you’ll just return to the novel again to read about her visions, about Athansor, about Peter Lake, about love and the building of bridges.

Title: Winter’s Tale
Author: Mark Helprin
Publisher: Harcourt Books
Year: 1983
Pages: 748 pages
Source: Own Collection
Stars: 5 stars out of 5

Best of 2012 – Armchair BEA day 2

Posted on June 5, 2012 by christinasr

So … if you’ve been following this blog for a while, you know I went nuts back in January, posting post after post about all the exciting new books coming out this year. I mentioned quite a few novels – but I must admit that I haven’t read any of these. I have bought a few of them though and plan on buying more.

That being said, there are of course more books I’m excited about. One of these is a new novel by Mark Helprin. I’m reading his novel Winter’s Tale at the moment and I love it. If the new is somewhat along the lines of Winter’s Tale, I’m going to love it. And it does sound like it so I’m hoping. Here’s the blurb:

Mark Helprin’s enchanting and sweeping new novel asks a simple question: can love and honor conquer all? New York in 1947 glows with post-war energy. Harry Copeland, an elite paratrooper who fought behind enemy lines in Europe, returns home to run the family business. In a single, magical encounter on the Staten Island ferry, the young singer and heiress Catherine Thomas Hale falls for him in an instant, too late to prevent her engagement to a much older man. Harry and Catherine pursue one another in a romance played out in postwar America’s Broadway theaters, Long Island mansions, the offices of financiers, and the haunts of gangsters. Catherine’s choice of Harry over her long-time fiancé endangers Harry’s livelihood and eventually threatens his life.Entrancing in its lyricism, In Sunlight and in Shadow so powerfully draws you into New York at the dawn of the modern age that, as in a vivid dream, you will not want to leave.

Another book I’m really excited about is John Irving’s new novel, In One Year. I’ve just bought it yesterday and since I love Irving and this is supposed to be Irving revisiting some of the themes from A Prayer for Owen Meany and The World According to Garp. Since Garp is my favorite novel and both are amazing novels, I’m really excited about this book. Blurb time:

In One Person is a novel that makes you proud to be human. It is a book that not only accepts but also loves our differences. From the beginning of his career, Irving has always cherished our peculiarities-in a fierce, not a saccharine, way. Now he has extended his sympathies-and ours-still further into areas that even the misfits eschew. Anthropologists say that the interstitial-whatever lies between two familiar opposites-is usually declared either taboo or sacred. John Irving in this magnificent novel-his best and most passionate since The World According to Garp-has sacralized what lies between polarizing genders and orientations. And have I mentioned it is also a gripping page-turner and a beautifully constructed work of art?

Finally, the third book I want to mention, is Ben Marcus’ The Flame Alphabet. I’ve written about this before and I have bought it – or rather, I have had my friend buy it for me, I just haven’t gotten it in my hands yet. It sounds totally amazing and I can’t wait to read it!

A startling epidemic has struck the country and the sound of children’s speech has become lethal. Radio transmissions from strange sources indicate that people are going into hiding. All Sam and Claire need to do is look around the neighborhood: In the park, parents wither beneath the powerful screams of their children. With Claire nearing collapse, it seems their only means of survival is to flee from their daughter, Esther. But Sam and Claire find it isn’t so easy to leave the daughter they still love, even as they waste away from her malevolent speech. On the eve of their departure, Claire mysteriously disappears, and Sam, determined to find a cure for this new toxic language, presses on alone into a world beyond recognition.

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