opusculasedfera: stack of books, with a mug of tea on top (Default)
[personal profile] opusculasedfera
I've been keeping up with the challenge, but very bad about posting it anywhere. Let's see if I can change that this year as people come back to dreamwidth, maybe? (Please?)

Brief reviews:

A Burst of Light and other essays by Audre Lorde
A reread of the always magnificent Audre Lorde. I needed her essay on the uses of anger in this extremely trying time.

The Occasional Vegetarian: 100 Delicious Dishes that Put Vegetables in the Center of the Plate by Elaine Louie
Some excellent sounding recipes, some mediocre sounding recipes. Billed to me by the library catalogue as containing more essay than recipe, it was definitely the other way around, but if you want something new to do with a vegetable, this has a broad approach and recipes from a wide variety of food traditions. Tends to ignore the fact that even vegetarians need PROTEIN and heartiness/substance is not the same thing, which always annoys me a bit.

Following Fish: One Man's Journey into the Food and Culture of the Indian Coast by Samanth Subramanian
One of those books where someone travels somewhere and eats something delicious and describes it well. A solid example of the genre. Contains some excellent descriptions of fish cookery and Indian scenery, and some parts of India I know very little about. I enjoyed it, and Subramanian is much more aware that he's describing a delicious fried fish, not a deep secret of politics/society/life than the title makes it sound, which keeps the book light and compelling. If anyone has any more recs in this genre, I would be delighted to receive them.

The Death of Truth: Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump by Michiko Kakutani
An exploration of various historical antecedents to our current state of anything-goes political lies. Depressing as hell, but very good at the thing that it's doing.

Myth=Mithya: Decoding Hindu Mythology by Devdutt Pattanaik
An explanation of several Hindu myths as well as the personages/symbols within them. It took me months to finish this quite short volume so I kept getting the many, many names confused, but I don't think that was the author's fault. Does a good job with some myths at straightforwardly explaining how the same myth gets used to tell different lessons in different communities, but with other ones I was left feeling like there was a definite slant to the story and I was wondering whose story it was. On the other hand, it's not supposed to be a comprehensive guide, just a starting point, and I know that I'm not especially knowledgeable on the subject.

Tags: sri lanka, japan, african-american, india, china, food/cooking, mythology, politics, history, essay, non-fiction

[identity profile] muse-books.livejournal.com

UK Cover
"She's not real, honey, she's only an idea. I made her up." - St John Fox to Daphne Fox.

It is 1938 and the celebrated American novelist St John Fox is hard at work in his study until his long absent muse wanders in. Mary Foxe is beautiful, British and 100% imaginary. She is in a playfully combative mood, accusing him of being a villain, a serial killer. For St John Fox has a predilection for murdering the heroines of his tales and Mary has returned determined to change his ways. She challenges him to join her in a series of stories of their own devising. However, it isn't long before St John's wife, Daphne Fox, becomes suspicious of Miss Mary Foxe and a most unusual love triangle ensures.

Framed by this interplay between Mr & Mrs Fox and Miss Foxe are a nine short stories that flit through time and place. Foxes naturally feature prominently in this exquisite novel and the cover art for the USA edition makes this clearer with its anthropomorphic foxes while the UK cover, with its elegant 1930s motif, is more ambivalent. I actually liked both for different reasons.


US Cover
Oyeyemi draws on myth, fairytale and fable from various lands with special emphasis upon Bluebeard and his English equivalent, the were-fox Reynardine. Oyeyemi weaves these into the fabric of her central story and tales with the skill of a true storyteller. There are also themes linked to creativity and the relationship between artist and muse.

This was a book that I fell in love with from its first page and remained enchanted throughout. So much so that I was quite happy to revisit it immediately via its audio edition. The beautiful writing of the novel was further enhanced by Carole Boyd's rich voice and range of character voices. This is one I cannot recommend highly enough to those drawn to works of magical realism and this kind of tale of animal transformations and re-told faerie tales. This is the third of Oyeyemi's four novels I have read and each has been memorable though overall I found this the most accessible to date.

Endicott Studio Article on Bluebeard - Page 2 on Mr. Fox/Reynardine.

Helen Oyeyemi's 'Mr. Fox' page at Picador - includes links to her 'fox thoughts' and the opening chapter.
[identity profile] alankria.livejournal.com
I'm way behind on posting here and, for various reasons, all but one of the following books are currently not in my possession - so these are pretty short reviews.

4. Bahiyyih Nakhjavani, Paper

The back made it sound wonderful: a scribe in central Asia searching for the perfect paper, while his town's location at a crossroads of travel and politics impacts upon his life. While it is about that, the execution is not as good as I'd hoped. A lot of time is given over to the Scribe's unhappy musings about his life and how he's just not capable of writing the perfect book. Events unfold sometimes slowly, sometimes offstage, with the overall effect of not particularly gripping me. Bahiyyih Nakhjavani's language is lovely in places and some of the characters are interesting, but I felt like the novel isn't quite as focused as it could have been: it muses, it tells, but it doesn't quite work. Certainly interesting, though, and I intend to re-read it sometime because I suspect there are layers to be found. Also there's a chronology of paper-related history at the back which is marvellous.

5. Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo & Erlinda Enriquez Panlilio, eds. Why I Travel and other essays by fourteen women

Now this was a find! It's a collection of travel essays by Filipina, with a section focusing on local destinations and another on international ones. A small section at the back considers the how of travel in particular; one my favourite essays is here, concerning how a wheelchair-bound woman has discovered that she shouldn't feel too limited by her situation, and she tells all about her adventures in a Moroccan souk on donkey-back and other experiences around the world, where the help of a few people has resulted in her having a fantastic time. The essays sometimes describe the places visited, sometimes dwell on personal history in that places (especially in the local section), and are almost all engaging and interesting.

6. Rattawut Lapcharoensap, Sightseeing

A collection of short stories by a Thai author. This means, crucially, that you're getting stories about Thailand as a complex and real place, not the magical land of golden temples and hookers often described by farang writers. Rattawut is concerned with the regular Thai person, not particularly wealthy, often in a perpetual balancing act just above poverty. He writes about a young boy's relationship with a Cambodian refugee whose now-dead father put all their wealth in her gold teeth; he writes about a young man whose mother is on the verge of going blind; he writes about a teenaged girl whose poor father is losing his cockfights to a rich bully, and the various consequences this has on their family; he writes about a wealthy teenaged boy dodging the draft while his poorer friend cannot; and so on. In some stories, the plot itself is not particularly innovative. The entire emotional arc of the draft-dodging story was predictable, for instance. But the way Rattawut writes allows you to really get into his characters' heads and understand their various decisions, so they are not distant or simple stories, and the Thailand he writes about is a difficult, interesting, complicated place. Definitely recommended, especially for readers of realist fiction or those interested in Thailand/SE Asia as depicted by a local.

7. Orhan Pamuk, My Name is Red

Oh, My Name is Red, I did want to adore you. Those long beautiful passages on the nature of art and miniaturism and history are, in my opinion, worth the price of admission alone. (Especially if you, uh, got it for cheaps at an Indian pavement book stall.) Yet the characters are almost all un-captivating and parts of the plot progress strangely. A character is tortured and, within pages of the torture ending, decides that the man who gave the order is going to be his new mentor and father figure, and Pamuk spends the rest of the book telling us that they have a deep and meaningful bond. We're told a lot about characterisation in this book. I enjoyed reading about historic Istanbul (and I can't imagine the city under snow!) and, as I said, his tangents were divine, and parts of the murder plot were pretty interesting. Overall, though, a bit of a flawed package.

8. Githa Hariharan, When Dreams Travel

A novel about storytelling and storytellers, especially female, typically powerless ones. Hariharan takes the myth of Shahrzad and begins after it ended, with her sister Dunyazad returning to Shahrzad's palace to help her husband construct her tomb. Echoes of the Taj Mahal in its vast splendour and the Sultan's obsession and the consequences. Dunyazad and a scheming maidservant with a peculiarly hairy mole meet and share stories, including many of a hair-covered woman who was eventually ostracised by her community -- revolving around the possibility that Shahrzad escaped and they can too, from the entrapments of the old 1001 Night story and the present concerns of their lives. When Dreams Travel is a curious, meandering book, beautifully written.
[identity profile] wordsofastory.livejournal.com
5. The Mahabharata: a Modern Rendering by, um, it's complicated? Trditionally ascribed to Vyasa (who is also a character in the story itself), probably actually composed by multiple people at various points in time, this version translated and edited by Ramesh Menon.

The Mahabharata is one of the two major Indian epics (the other being the Ramayana), and I've been meaning to read it for ages. And I'm very happy that I've now done so! (Though I guess that means I need to read the Ramayana next.) I picked this translation off of a recommendation on this community, and though I can't compare it to any others, I did really enjoy it. It's quite long- two volumes of about 800 pages each- but it's a fantastic, compelling story, full of all kinds of awesome stuff: gods and secret identities and earth-destroying weapons and reincarnations and gender-switching and so much more!

To completely over-simplify the plot, there are two sets of cousins: the Pandavas, who consist of five brothers who are all the sons of gods, and the Kauravas, who consist of a hundred brothers who may be demons. The eldest son of each group wants to inherit the throne, and the machinations and secret assassination attempts and broken promises eventually lead to Kurukshetra and the Greatest War Ever, which causes the end of the age. My favorite characters were Amba, who holds such a grudge that she kills herself and is reincarnated as a warrior to kill her enemy; Draupadi, who marries all five of the Pandava brothers and is amazingly fierce; and Kunti, who is able to summon gods, and who uses this to sleep with them.

There's so many characters and sub-plots and side stories and so forth that it's hard to even describe the Mahabharata. But it's AWESOME, and I loved it.
[identity profile] rachelmanija.livejournal.com
A gorgeously illustrated and lively picture book retelling of the beginning of the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West. (One version of the latter here: The Monkey and the Monk: An Abridgment of The Journey to the West).

Given that it’s a picture book, it concludes once the companions are all assembled, with a note that the real story has only just begun. But it stands well on its own as a playful adventure with tons of action.

I shamefully confess that I haven’t yet read the original, though I have obtained the version I linked above, so I don’t know how accurate this version is. But it tells a good story and might be an easy introduction to the premise and the main characters.

Illustrated by L. K. Tay-Audouard.

Monkey: The Classic Chinese Adventure Tale
ext_12911: This is a picture of my great-grandmother and namesake, Margaret (Default)
[identity profile] gwyneira.livejournal.com
#23: Jenny Han, The Summer I Turned Pretty

Every year, Belly (short for Isabel) looks forward to spending her summer at the beach house her family shares with her mother's best friend Susannah and her sons Conrad and Jeremiah. Conrad and Jeremiah alternately gang up on Belly with her brother Steven and act big-brotherly toward her, and for years, Belly has had a quiet crush on the moody Conrad. This summer, things are a little different; Belly is turning sixteen, and suddenly the boys are aware of her as a girl. An added complication is Susannah's precarious health, which makes Belly feel as though the adults are keeping secrets from her, secrets that perhaps Conrad, more moody than usual, knows and hates.

Han adds complexity to the story with frequent flashbacks to Belly's previous summers, so that we slowly see the history of her relationships and how they've developed over the years. I liked Belly's narrative voice, which sounds authentically teenaged, and the depth of the characterization, both elements which reminded me strongly of Sarah Dessen's books (which I love). The various strands of the plot are well balanced and work together to form an emotionally complex whole, as Belly's summer becomes that essential time in which she begins to grow out of childhood.


#24-26: Laurence Yep, Dragon Steel, Dragon Cauldron, Dragon War

It took me a while to get to these after reading Dragon of the Lost Sea back in March, because I wanted to collect all three of the remaining books before reading them.

Anyway, these continue the story of the dragon princess Shimmer and her human companion Thorn in their quest to restore Shimmer's lost ocean home. When Shimmer returns to the dragon High King for help, she discovers that her entire clan have been enslaved by him, and now she must save them all in addition to saving their home. Shimmer and Thorn pick up more companions along the way: the witch Civet, the human Indigo, and most wonderfully, the trickster Monkey, who narrates the last two books. I especially loved Monkey's narration, because he's funny and entertaining in his own right, but he also provides an outside POV on the books' key relationship, between Shimmer and Thorn. All in all, although they skew a little younger than most of the children's and young adult books I read now, I really liked the series' blend of excellent characterization, great use of Chinese mythology, and fast-paced action.
[identity profile] whereweather.livejournal.com
#8. Mother Love, Rita Dove

1995, W.W. Norton & Co.

 

The title of this book rhymes with the author's name, which must be unintentional but which for some reason I can't get out of my mind.

 

This is the first book, the first thing really, I have read by Rita Dove. My first reaction upon finishing it was that I liked it, I admired it or many things in it, but ultimately I didn't think it held together as a book, with the arc of the story that it is claiming to tell.

 

I have been thinking about it for two or three weeks now, though, and I keep on thinking about it, and now I have started reading the book again. There is a lot to return to there. So I have to say it is growing on me, and all in all may be a richer and more lasting work than I had initially thought.

 

The theme of the book, despite its title, is not really mothering qua mothering. It is the myth of Demeter and Persephone, focusing on these principal players -- which itself bears remarking, because there are many treatments of the myth that pay attention instead to the way the story affects the (male, it must be said) gods around them. (The story, in brief, is this: while gathering flowers, young Persephone wanders away from her friends and is kidnapped to Hell by Hades, king of the underworld. He wants her to marry him and be his wife. Demeter, her mother, the goddess of growth and harvest, goes on strike and lets the world wither -- an action of anger? grief? or both? -- until Zeus, king of the gods (and brother to both Hades and Demeter) makes Hades return Persephone. But Persephone has eaten six seeds of a pomegranate down there, so for six months of the year she must go under the earth to sleep with Hades and be queen in Hell, and the other six months she may rejoin her mother above ground. And this, says the myth, is why we have winter.)

 

The pit is down below... )
[identity profile] lady-jem.livejournal.com


5. Women who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype, Clarissa Pinkola-Estes

Okay, maybe I shouldn't include this one here, since I started it before I started the 50-book challenge, but I've been reading it in little sips between other books and I only now finished it. (This is my second reading of it, by the way--I got a lot out of it at age 23, and I got a lot--a different lot--out now at 40.)

Pinkola-Estes is a Jungian psychologist  and cantadora who looks at the fairy tales of different cultures, deconstructs them and mines them for archetypal wisdom.  Her premise is that many women in Western culture have allowed ourselves to be "domesticated," losing touch with our primal instincts and inherently wild nature, and that the journey to wholeness requires a re-connection with this wildish nature.

It's a fascinating book, and one which completely changed my outlook on my own life and growth 17 years ago the first time I read it, and now again as a woman on the other side of youth. Highly recommended.
--J
[identity profile] whereweather.livejournal.com
Brown Girl in the Ring, Nalo Hopkinson
1998

Well, I see that Nalo Hopkinson is very popular here.  I have had several of her books on my to-read list for years, so I began with this one.

My feelings about the book are mixed -- it definitely shows many of the signs of a first novel, including some very clumsily worded passages, and a lot of filtering-type language ("Ti-Jeanne thought... Ti-Jeanne felt... Ti-Jeanne heard XX say..."), as well as some info-dumping ("Ti-Jeanne knew...")  But the setting, and the cultural and political backdrop, are so new and so vibrant -- fully felt, deeply realized and believed in -- that the book has some very strong bones, despite the occasional infelicities.  

more... )

Anyway.  An interesting book, and I will look forward to seeing how Hopkinson's style develops as she progresses in her career.  Two and a half or three stars out of five, I think: two or two and a half for execution and technique, and three and a half for power and potential.

(ETA: Oh!  And I am also going to read Derek Walcott's "Ti-Jean and His Brothers," which ought to shed further light.)
[identity profile] wordsofastory.livejournal.com
I was away from the internet for most of the beginning of this year, and so I've written some short reviews for the books I read during that time. At the link are my reviews of:

1. Natsuo Kirino, Grotesque
2. Alexandre Dumas, Twenty Years After
3. Shereen Ratnagar, Trading Encounters: From the Euphrates to the Indus in the Bronze Age
4. Dalai Lama, How to Practice
5. Lalita Tademy, Cane River
6. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Palace of Illusions
7. Wendy Lee, Happy Family
8. Randa Abdel-Fattah, Does My Head Look Big In This?

All reviews here!

I enjoyed all of them, but the short summary is: if you only read one, I recommend Does My Head Look Big In This?
[identity profile] violent-rabbit.livejournal.com
Second Book: Stradbroke Dreamtime by Oodgeroo aka Kath Walker


The first half details stories from her childhood, growing up in the traditional Aboriginal manner and the second half is a collection of Dreamtime stories.

This is primarily a children's book, but do not let that turn you off! There is a beautiful rich imagery to all though this and the simplistic writing only serves to further the wonderful visuals. There is a wistful and loving tone that creates a lovely warmth throughout the entire recollections. It is a a nice gentle introduction to what life was like in her childhood as an aborigine near the bush (for a clueless suburbanite like myself).

I was struck, personally, at how sad most of the Dreamtime stories were. I am of the opinion that one purpose they served was as warnings coded into tales- don't wander off or the bunyip will turn you into a vine- which it a tradition throughout all cultures with active children.


Well worth the read.
[identity profile] violent-rabbit.livejournal.com
My 1st book:

The Icarus Girl by Helen Oyeyemi


Synopsis: (taken straight from Bloomsbury web site) )

I found it to be a wonderfully magical book. It is, at its core, a meditation on growing up biracial. It reminded me of Pan's labyrinth and Alice in wonderland as much of the fantasy elements had a sinister element to them. The fantastical elements were also used as vehicles for observations on post colonialism and have a wonderful ambiguity as to their concrete nature. (it is late I'm probably not making sense sry)

It seems to be out of print so I offer my copy to anyone who is interested because it is a excellent read and I highly recommend it.
[identity profile] sweet-adelheid.livejournal.com
Books #16-19

16. The Trouble with Islam, by Irshad Manji
Manji is a Canadian of Indian ancestry whose early life was in Uganda before Idi Amin expelled the Asian population. The book (which I read in an original edition - it was later renamed as The Trouble with Islam Today, although I don't know if that involved any changes to the text) was first published in 2003. I liked it, and found a lot in it to make me think, and that I admired. However, I also know that this book is *not* highly thought of in many quarters. (It was, therefore, refreshing to find Randa Abdel-Fattah saying pretty much the same main argument in The Age newspaper on the weekend.) More here.

17. Stradbroke Dreamtime, by Oodgeroo Noonuccal and Bronwyn Bancroft
A beautiful book - part memoir of Oodgeroo's childhood, and part collection of stories from the Dreaming. Bronwyn Bancroft's artwork is an absolute highlight and, for me, really makes this book something special. More here.

18. Secrets of the Red Lantern: Stories and Recipes from the Heart, by Pauline Nguyen
Far more than a cookbook. A memoir of Nguyen's family, a beautifully produced book, mouthwatering food photography... I can't recommend this highly enough. More here.

19. Daisy Kutter: The Last Train, by Kazu Kibuishi
My first ever comic book/manga! Set in a world that's pretty much Firefly crossed with Star Wars, Daisy is a retired gunslinger lured out of retirement for a Train Job. There's clearly a lot of backstory, but I'm fairly sure that this is the first (currently only, unfortunately) Daisy Kutter comic. As I think both Daisy and her unfortunate sidekick Tom are fabulous characters (very white, though, for those who would find that a problem), I rather hope there are more to come. More here.
elf: Quote: She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain (Fond of Books)
[personal profile] elf
I'm counting these as one entry, because I read them together; RWood at the MobileRead forums has nicely combined them to a single ebook. (They're available separately in several places online; many public domain books are.) I first ran across her article, Why I Am A Pagan at Wowio.com, a free ebook site that used to let you download books. (Now you can read their entire collection online, but most of them have to be paid for to download. They are, however, DRM-free PDFs, so I'll probably be looking at more of them.)

I think of this as a book in two parts: Old Indian Legends, a collection of fairytale-like stories, the kind told to children to teach them ethics and bits of how the world works, and American Indian Stories, biographical excerpts from her life which occasionally mention the stories. The LRF-formatted book I read is less than 300 pages on my Reader--about the length of the average Harlequin Romance, probably about 60,000 words total. Combined, they're short enough to easily consider as one book.

Old Indian Legends begins with the story, "Iktomi and the Ducks." Excerpt and comments behind cut, not spoiler-formatted because it's the very beginning of the book. )

This book, or these books (depending on how you want to think of them) are available as free downloads from MobileRead's forums, in BBeB/LRF format (which is what I read), in Mobipocket PRC format, and in eBookwise IMP format. The first two are readable with more than one kind of free software; I believe Calibre will open them both.
ext_12911: This is a picture of my great-grandmother and namesake, Margaret (Default)
[identity profile] gwyneira.livejournal.com
#8: Laurence Yep, Dragon of the Lost Sea

On a quest to recover the magical gem that contains her lost ocean home, the dragon princess Shimmer encounters a boy, Thorn. When he saves Shimmer's life in a fight, she rather reluctantly decides that he may accompany her as they pursue her enemy Civet. Though Shimmer doesn't originally feel that Thorn is her equal, because he's so much less powerful than she, she finds that they may have more in common than she thinks and that they can work together to achieve her quest.

The characterization is excellent. The relationship between Shimmer and Thorn is particularly nicely done; overtly, one is powerful and one is comparatively weak, but they develop an equal, helping relationship. It's mostly from Shimmer's viewpoint, since she's the one whose quest it is and who has to change more in order to perceive Thorn as an equal, but there are some passages from Thorn's point of view which show how he sees himself as taking care of her, rather than the reverse. The villain, Civet, is also more three-dimensional than she at first appears, which made the final confrontation more complex and less predictable.

I really liked the setting. I've always had a weakness for fiction based on fairy tales and mythology, and this hit me in that spot, especially since it's a mythology that I've not read much of. I should read more Chinese mythology and folklore, really; I'd would be interested to see exactly what Yep did use of the tale he started with, about the Old Mother of the Waters, since he says his story grew and changed a lot from there.

This is the first in a series of four (I think), and I'm already tracking down the other ones to read them.

#9: Sherri L. Smith, Sparrow

When Kendall was five, she walked away from a car crash that killed her parents and younger brother. Since then, she's lived with her G'ma, and lately she's been struggling to balance school with taking care of G'ma, who's increasingly frail after a stroke. When G'ma dies, Kendall is left on her own and sets out to find the only family she knows of, her aunt Janet, who lives in New Orleans and hasn't seen Kendall since her family's funeral. Sparrow has a nice setup, but the ending is a little too pat and rushed. I liked it in a quiet way, but I preferred Flygirl, which is more complex in plot and especially in characterization. I'm trying to decide now whether to go back and read Lucy the Giant or wait for her next book.

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