I am ashamed. I’ve shaved down last year’s significant goal of one book a week to thirty books for 2014, and I’m about four books behind. I BLAME THE EVIL KINDLE.
Just kidding. The Kindle was a godsend while overseas, but I’m happy to be reunited with paper and book smell.
There’s something about travelling. I find it hard to read while in transit, yet I’ve done so much of it over the past six months. I prefer to think. Or not think. I tend to pass out as soon as a bus starts rolling. I’m like an infant that needs to be driven around the block to be put to sleep.
But since I’ve been home, I’ve read three books in a week and a half. I’m glad the desire in me isn’t dead.
I stopped writing, too. But I lived so damn hard and fast, everything was worth it. Everything. I stopped feeling guilty when I read this quote in “Zorba the Greek”: “All those who actually live the mysteries of life haven’t the time to write, and all those who have the time don’t live them! D’you see?”
Justified in the name of literature.
So I’ve decided to share what I’ve read for the first half of this year, and hopefully from now on I’ll make this more regular. Book nerds, unite!
A House in the Sky – Amanda Lindhout
Quick summary
As a child, Amanda Lindhout escaped a violent household by paging through issues of National Geographic and imagining herself in its exotic locales. At the age of nineteen, working as a cocktail waitress in Calgary, Alberta, she began saving her tips so she could travel the globe. Aspiring to understand the world and live a significant life, she backpacked through Latin America, Laos, Bangladesh, and India, and emboldened by each adventure, went on to Sudan, Syria, and Pakistan. In war-ridden Afghanistan and Iraq she carved out a fledgling career as a television reporter. And then, in August 2008, she traveled to Somalia—“the most dangerous place on earth.” On her fourth day, she was abducted by a group of masked men along a dusty road.
Held hostage for 460 days, Amanda converts to Islam as a survival tactic, receives “wife lessons” from one of her captors, and risks a daring escape. Moved between a series of abandoned houses in the desert, she survives on memory—every lush detail of the world she experienced in her life before captivity—and on strategy, fortitude, and hope. When she is most desperate, she visits a house in the sky, high above the woman kept in chains, in the dark, being tortured.
Three-line review
Actually, this is going to be longer than three lines. It was the first book I read this year, and the msot memorable. Months later, it still haunts me. It kills me. This book gave me nightmares.
But what really struck me was the negative backlash from a huge audience. Margaret Wente described her as “naive” and “reckless,” while idiots posted on Lindhout’s Facebook page about raping her and enjoying it. It killed me. As if she deserved all this. Maybe it’s a generational thing. She was an incredibly passionate, somewhat naive 20-something chasing her dream. She made some stupid choices, but she is braver, smarter, and more compassionate than most people I know in their 20s…myself included. I’ve even read a review saying “she got what she deserved.” She deserved to be raped, tortured, locked up, and starved? Outrageously offensive and disturbing. I actually couldn’t believe what I was reading.
Read this book. It’s riveting. The chase scene — I have never been so spellbound. My god.
The Shoemaker’s Wife – Adriana Trigiani
Quick summary
The majestic and haunting beauty of the Italian Alps is the setting of the first meeting of Enza, a practical beauty, and Ciro, a strapping mountain boy, who meet as teenagers, despite growing up in villages just a few miles apart. At the turn of the last century, when Ciro catches the local priest in a scandal, he is banished from his village and sent to hide in America as an apprentice to a shoemaker in Little Italy. Without explanation, he leaves a bereft Enza behind. Soon, Enza’s family faces disaster and she, too, is forced to go to America with her father to secure their future.
Unbeknownst to one another, they both build fledgling lives in America, Ciro masters shoemaking and Enza takes a factory job in Hoboken until fate intervenes and reunites them. But it is too late: Ciro has volunteered to serve in World War I and Enza, determined to forge a life without him, begins her impressive career as a seamstress at the Metropolitan Opera House that will sweep her into the glamorous salons of Manhattan and into the life of the international singing sensation, Enrico Caruso.
Three-line review
I haven’t read a good love story in awhile. I really enjoyed this one. Trigiani has this thing with descriptions — you’ll immediately want to go live on an Italian mountain and find an Italian lover and eat Italian gnocchi for the rest of your days. Romance.
****/*****
The Cellist of Sarajevo – Steven Galloway
Quick summary
In a city under siege, four people whose lives have been upended are ultimately reminded of what it is to be human. From his window, a musician sees twenty-two of his friends and neighbors waiting in a breadline. Then, in a flash, they are killed by a mortar attack. In an act of defiance, the man picks up his cello and decides to play at the site of the shelling for twenty-two days, honoring their memory. Elsewhere, a young man leaves home to collect drinking water for his family and, in the face of danger, must weigh the value of generosity against selfish survivalism. A third man, older, sets off in search of bread and distraction and instead runs into a long-ago friend who reminds him of the city he thought he had lost, and the man he once was. As both men are drawn into the orbit of cello music, a fourth character- a young woman, a sniper- holds the fate of the cellist in her hands. As she protects him with her life, her own army prepares to challenge the kind of person she has become.
Three-line review
This book was more meaningful now that I’ve visited Sarajevo and heard some first-hand accounts from the people living there. This book will stay with you for a long time. I still cannot wrap my head around the fact that this all happened just 20 years ago.
****/*****
Zorba the Greek – Nikos Kazantzakis
Quick summary
Zorba the Greek, Nikos Kazantzakis’ most popular and enduring novel, has its origins in the author’s own experiences of mining and harvesting in the Peleponnesus in the 1920s. His swashbuckling hero has its legions of literary fans across the world and his adventures are as exhilarating and havoc-making now as they were on first publication in the 1950s
Three-line review
I don’t know what to say about this book. The good moments were really, really good. But then there was some tedium that made it difficult to read. Zorba’s chauvinism was hard to swallow. Regardless, it brought me back to Greece, and I appreciate that.
****/*****
Quotes
“I felt once more how simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea. Nothing else.”
The Divergent Series (Books 1, 2, and 3) – Veronica Roth
Quick summary
In Beatrice Prior’s dystopian Chicago world, society is divided into five factions, each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue–Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). On an appointed day of every year, all sixteen-year-olds must select the faction to which they will devote the rest of their lives. For Beatrice, the decision is between staying with her family and being who she really is–she can’t have both. So she makes a choice that surprises everyone, including herself.
Three-line review
Don’t judge, ok? I found the first book on the olive farm, and then I got hooked. Everyone needs an addictive read every now and then. I just wish Tris didn’t tug at the hem of her shirt all the time, or wipe her sweaty hands in her pants every three seconds.
***/*****
Around the World in 80 Days – Jules Verne
Quick summary
One ill-fated evening at the Reform Club, Phileas Fogg rashly bets his companions that he can travel around the entire globe in just eighty days — and he is determined not to lose. Breaking the well-established routine of his daily life, the reserved Englishman immediately sets off for Dover, accompaned by his hot-blooded manservant Passepartout. Traveling by train, steamship, sailboat, sledge, and even elephant, they must overcome storms, kidnappings, natural disasters, Sioux attacks, and the dogged Inspector Fix of Scotland Yard — who believes that Fogg has robbed the Bank of England — to win the extraordinary wager. Around the World in 80 Days gripped audiences on its publication and remains hugely popular, combining exploration, adventure, and a thrilling race against time.
Three-line review
A fun read, although infuriating at times. Phileas Fogg is such a badass, and I love this Classic way of telling a story. Simple language with the most upbeat tone. Oh yes, and a great story for anyone who’s doing a worldwide trip.
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath – Sylvia Plath
Quick summary
Sylvia Plath’s journals were originally published in 1982 in a heavily abridged version authorized by Plath’s husband, Ted Hughes. This new edition is an exact and complete transcription of the diaries Plath kept during the last twelve years of her life. Sixty percent of the book is material that has never before been made public, more fully revealing the intensity of the poet’s personal and literary struggles, and providing fresh insight into both her frequent desperation and the bravery with which she faced down her demons. The complete Journals of Sylvia Plath is essential reading for all who have been moved and fascinated by Plath’s life and work.
Three-line review
I love Plath with every bone in my body. I feel we are the same person on many levels. I also felt kind of sleazy reading this. Plath’s mental illness is painfully obvious, and it’s hard to accept the fact that such a literary genius gave it all up.
****/*****
Quotes
“I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in life. And I am horribly limited.”
“I like people too much or not at all. I’ve got to go down deep, to fall into people, to really know them.”
Beyond Belfast – Will Ferguson
Quick summary
Offbeat, charming, and filled with humour and insight, Beyond Belfast is the story of one man’s misguided attempt at walking the Ulster Way, “the longest waymarked trail in the British Isles.” It’s a journey that takes Will Ferguson through the small towns and half-forgotten villages of Northern Ireland, along rugged coastlines and across barren moorland heights, past crumbling castles and patchwork farms.
Three-line review
One of my favourite funny travel writers. Related to a lot of this. He sums up my feelings about Ireland’s Troubles damned well: “I could walk through bog and forest, city and village, could walk until I had beaten a trough in the soil, but I would never be able to walk my way into an understanding of any of this.”
***/*****
Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter – Thomas Cahill
Quick summary
In Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea, his fourth volume to explore the hinges of history, Thomas Cahill escorts the reader on another entertaining and historically unassailable journey through the landmarks of art and bloodshed that defined Greek culture nearly three millennia ago.
Three-line review
I picked this up at Atlantis bookstore in Santorini because it felt appropriate. For a history text, it’s great, albeit obviously laden with personal opinion. But my favourite part was all the pornography. Giggidy.
***/*****
What is the What – Dave Eggers
Quick summary
In a heartrending and astonishing novel, Eggers illuminates the history of the civil war in Sudan through the eyes of Valentino Achak Deng, a refugee now living in the United States. We follow his life as he’s driven from his home as a boy and walks, with thousands of orphans, to Ethiopia, where he finds safety — for a time. Valentino’s travels, truly Biblical in scope, bring him in contact with government soldiers, janjaweed-like militias, liberation rebels, hyenas and lions, disease and starvation — and a string of unexpected romances. Ultimately, Valentino finds safety in Kenya and, just after the millennium, is finally resettled in the United States, from where this novel is narrated. In this book, written with expansive humanity and surprising humor, we come to understand the nature of the conflicts in Sudan, the refugee experience in America, the dreams of the Dinka people, and the challenge one indomitable man faces in a world collapsing around him.
Three-line review
Oh my lord. An unbelievably incredible read. Should be mandatory material in all English classes. No, should be mandatory for everyone in the world. I cried at so many scenes in this book.
*****/*****
The post I’m really sucking at reading this year, but here’s my 2014 list so far appeared first on Candice Does The World.