SOS! Help me winnow down the last 22 books!

Hey y'all, it's coming down to the wire now. This Friday I go to a friend's house to cat sit, then as soon as that's done it's back to Vancouver to mother sit (my mother's having knee replacement surgery) and then back to Nanaimo. So I more or less need to pack this week. Which means... book decisions!!

I've thought up some really random ways to choose the rest of the books. I hope you'll enjoy them. Sorry the writing is so small--you might need to zoom in (command + on a mac).

Now the results for...

 

Here are the books you unwittingly voted on...

Nigeria: Half of a Yellow Sun by Adichie, and The Bride Price by Emecheta

"Biafra’s impassioned struggle to establish an independent republic in Nigeria in the 1960s, and the chilling violence that followed."

"A powerful story of a modern Nigerian girl who rebels against traditional marriage customs."

Kenya: The In-Between World of Vikram Lall by Vassanji

"Against the unsettling backdrop of Mau Mau violence, the grandchildren of an Indian railroad worker search for their place in a world sharply divided between Kenyans and the British."

Lebanon: DeNiro's Game by Hage

"about a Lebanese petty criminal during the bloody civil war, who is only a little more ethical than a shithead." (Goodreads reviewer, lol)

Egypt: The Cairo Trilogy by Mahfouz

"the engrossing story of a Muslim family in Cairo during Britain’s occupation of Egypt"

Turkey: My Name is Red by Pamuk

"At once a fiendishly devious mystery, a beguiling love story, and a brilliant symposium on the power of art"

India: The White Tiger by Adiga, and Q&A (Slumdog Millionaire) by Swarup

"unsubtle look at 21st Century India... told by a working class fellow who, through ambition, intelligence, and a willingness to be utterly ruthless is clawing his way up the rungs of the Indian class ladder."

"a kaleidoscopic vision of the struggle between good and evil - and what happens when one boy has no other choice in life but to survive."

And so, Yellow Sun, Red, and the Cairo Trilogy make it on the longlist. Thanks again for the help! I'm enjoying our little democratic game.

BONUS! Most douchey review I came across on Goodreads (ohhh the hipstertude of it all!)

"Postcolonial lite. I feel like this is what I'm supposed to be reading while I listen to MIA and rock last season's mirrored "ethnic chic" from Urban Outfitters. To show that, you know, I'm a citizen of the world, and a really hip westerner who gets the shifting forces of globalization.... did I feel a bit pandered to? I did feel a bit pandered to. ... To be honest, I might have given it three stars if it hadn't won the Booker and made a bunch of Best of the Year lists."

    

  

 

 

Make Me Read This Book!

LES LIVRES EN FRANÇAIS

Thank-you for participating in the Great French Vote-a-tude. The clear winner was "Coeur trouvé aux objets perdus" with Miel and Écume trailing behind. I'll add the Miel book to the short list because I've had it for SO long.

I'm not sure I'll understand L'écume des jours. I just read the first paragraph and it sounds like the man has taken a fingernail cutter to his eyelids. So I looked up the phrase and the line turns out to be a famous "contrepèterie"--a spoonerism.  Better watch the movie first.

NON FICTION

Are you ready for the next challenge? I haven't read a lot of non-fiction since my two Poli Sci degrees--I was in a department that assigned a LOT of reading. And when I read non-fiction, it's usually research for my novels.

So... which one would you make me read this year? Vote! Vote! Vote! You know you want to.

The Evolutionists: The Struggle for Darwin's Soul 

The debates, not over whether evolution happened, but how it happened--from within the field of evolutionary biology.

Why I Bought It: Read part of it on loan from work, and just found it to be an entertaining primer on evolution. 

Wild Swans

Three generations of Chinese women--an American, her Revolutionary mother, and her concubine grandmother.

Why I Bought It: Just sounded interesting.

Millionaire: The Philanderer, Gambler, and Duelist Who Invented Modern Finance

Guy created the first bubble and bust in France. Topical non?

Why I Bought It: The dude sounds funny. And I enjoy economics, but have to read pop books cause I don't have the math mind.

 Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong: Why We Love France but Not the French

Why I Bought It: I've never been to France, and I don't hate the French. But the book looked entertaining.

The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives

Why I Bought It: Stats is like economics--I enjoy it, but can only grasp the frothy stuff.

Me Talk Pretty One Day

"Mines poignant comedy from his peculiar childhood in North Carolina, his bizarre career path, and his move with his lover to France."

Why I Bought It: Cause he's popular.

 The Corner

A year in the life of an inner-city neighborhood. The show The Wire is based on it.

Why I Bought It: Recommended by FriendPaul in the late 90s.

A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis

"how humanitarian organizations are often betrayed and misused, and have increasingly lost sight of their purpose."

Why I Bought It: Also recommended by FriendPaul. Yeah he's a cheerful guy. I think the dissertation he's writing is about western media coverage of the 1980s famine in Ethiopia. Should be vair interesting.

  Globalization and Its Discontents

"insider's account of global economic policy"

Why I Bought It: Recommended by my East Asian Politics prof--Stiglitz worked for the World Bank and is supposed to be one of the better critics of how US-led global organizations fuck around with other people's economies.

 When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda

"He coaxes to the surface the historical, geographical, and political forces that made it possible for so many Hutu to turn so brutally on their neighbors."

Why I Bought It: For school. But I was always speed-reading, so I want to re-read both this and Mamdani's other work. Super interesting descriptions of how ethnic identities are created.

The extra fun about this quest is that I'll feel obligated to read the books I bring with me. You can hold me to it!

Help Me Pick Some Books! (please!!)

THE PROBLEM

I'm moving to another province for a year, to live with my folks while looking for work. (No, not breaking up with hubby or cats.) Right now I'm at home to get things to bring back with me, including about 25 of my books to read. I own (official number now!) 1068 fiction books. You see the problem.

I've got it down to about 70 books. (Previous posts about this here.)

 

YOUR MISSION SHOULD YOU CHOOSE TO ACCEPT IT

Help me choose which French books to bring!

Yes, I would like you to vote (over on the left) for which French book(s) seem the most interesting. I figure it's much funner to ask Anglophones to vote on the French books, than on ones they may have read. :-)

Here are the covers, and a few words about each. If you don't have time, just pick your fave cover.

 

Marquise

About a famous actress who worked for Moliere, Racine, Corneille

pros - short, based on a movie (cause it's fun to see the movie after)

cons - novelization of a movie

 

L'écume des jours

About two couples, and a woman who has a flower growing out her heart.

pros - one of my friend's fave novels, a classic, movies made and being made

cons - surrealist, so my French might not be there yet

Les cerfs-volants

Two lovers in wartime France.

pros - Gary is one of France's most famous authors, a book about hope

cons - after writing it he shot himself in the head

Ce que le jour doit à la nuit

Star crossed lovers during the Algerian fight for independence

pros - was one of my fave areas of study, author is Algerian, famous for Swallows of Kabul

cons - star-crossed lovers

 

Un goût de bonheur et de miel sauvage

Family saga, granddaughter who doesn't want to take over the family business

pros - I bought the book in 1996 so maybe I should read it!

cons - bit longer than the others

 

Borderline

Semi-autiobio about a woman with a mentally ill mother and abusive grandmother

pros - it's short, was recommended to me, a movie made of it

cons - see the description

 

Du bon usage des étoiles

About Franklin's deadly Arctic trip, and his wife back home

pros - beautiful cover, recommended by a bookseller

cons - I didn't like the other book she recommended

Coeur trouvé aux objets perdus

Romance between a couple of oddballs.

pros - supposed to be funny, romantic light read

cons - trade sized paperback, so it's bigger

I've also short listed a horror novel by the French version of Stephen King, and a book about four people thrown together to make a mini-series that will be shown during the dead time over night.

Help! Help!

 

These Are the Books of Our Lives

Alright, I'm down to about 75 books. I think I need to look through them and muse a bit, and then I'll post the list. In the meantime, here's our last philosophical thinks upon sorting through the books...

WRITING IN BOOKS

My Grandfather

he was the English lit prof who gave me so many of my old-lit books

easy to recognise his handwriting, it's tiny and near illegible

His wife, my grandmother

she died of breast cancer before I was born

Their daughter, my mother

Her brother

 

Fernando

Moi

 

PARTING IS SUCH SWEET SORROW

It's harder to part with books that were my grandfather's--the Miltons and Chaucers and Elizabethan plays. Or books I read in university or college and enjoyed, like all the romances--Sir Gawain, Chretien de Troyes, The Song of Roland, the Canterbury Tales. I was contemplating Tristan and Iseult, which I've never read, and two reviews on Goodreads were praising the person who read it at Librivox (which I gather does audios of varying quality.) Which reminded me of the pleasure I took in listening to Chaucer in the car, eons ago, and decided it's probably the way to go.

So they all went. Except this teeny volume of Dante...

...because in the fly leaf my grandfather wrote that he bought it in Italy in 1945--which is where he was stationed in WWII. So Dante made it.

Even though I'd already chosen to keep the Dante he gave me in 1989 with Dore illustrations.

Which I keep next to the annotated Christmas Carol I stole from my father and used so much it's falling apart. (I even visited the graveyard pictured here, on London.)

 

I also kept my destroyed Friday's Child, though I have a better copy, cause it was the first Heyer I read. Picked up at a second hand store in Kingston by my mum, and casually tossed on the staircase: "I got this for you, you'll like it."

 

THE MARKERS OF OUR TOMES

Today's collection of bookmarks, including a plane ticket, a card from my brother, a security tag, a photo of Stratford Upon Avon, a 1990 calendar from my old church showing the holy days, the words to The Rose, a page from a course calendar, and a newspaper clipping from my mother adverising a church that "is not like spinach!"

Mid-day Book Sortitude Update!

RE-READING

I don't re-read a lot, and if you've been following this Mabel Catalogs Her Books series, you'll know why.

But I am dying to re-read all 1400 pages of A Suitable Boy. I was completely transported. ...And I'm hard to transport. I'm the kind of person you can talk to while reading or watching a movie, and I will hear you.

But I can't bring it with me. Too big. ...Maybe I'll buy the French ebook and read it that way.

 

UPDATE ON THE GENRES

Here are the finished, culled and organized shelves.

science fiction and fantasy

books that are part of a series, but we don't have the first book, are hidden at the back of each shelf so my husband will be less likely to choose one!

romance on the left

the agatha christies and hard cover/trade mysteries on the right

on the bottoms of the christies i wrote whether it's sans detective, or a mix of detectives, or a poirot, a marple, a tommy and tuppence, a harley quin, an oliver, or... i'm missing one

the mysteries in top (includes thrillers and a couple horrors)

and below is the lit, and children/ya

(i don't have a lot cause some is mixed in with the sff books, and i use the library more, when they're short)

Here's what I'm working through today. Getting there! When done, I have to organize clothes, get some things off the floor, and then do a big vacuum and floor wash. Get some of my stuff out of the way so Fernando can frolick in here while I'm in Nanaimo.

Fave Authors / Books

most already read, but i have to go through the unreads

Poetry and a Miscellany of Mess

Plays (and my prescriptions)

Will be back tonight with an update. When this is done, I should have the final Nanaimo longlist for your consideration! Now I'm off for a bath and recharge the ipad.

 

CAT PHOTO

High five Minion!

 

Miscellanies Upon the Sort-ahj of One's Library

Either I'm losing energy, or it's the cold of the apartment that's slowing me down. Brr! Wait while I turn on a space heater... By the way, sorry I haven't been by your blogs--having computah trouble.

COVERS

I've never read this book (though I read another Le Guin that was excellent)...

Of all the covers out there, the one we own is the one that most makes me want to read it.

not this one...

not this one...

not this one

not this one...

not this one...

not this one...

not this one...

THIS ONE!

hawk dude - Ta da!

poncy guy - WHAT THE FUCK??

though i admit this one's a close second

LONG BOOKS

I don't know whether to start Game of Thrones, which I bought ages ago. I'm thinking if I want to read about medieval intrigue and murder, in sprawling epic form, with a million characters, I can just read Penman's The Sunne in Splendour about the war of the roses. That is, read about the real thing. It's 800 trade sized pages, but at least it finishes, unlike Martin's still ongoing saga. I've written to ask the friend who recommended Penman, and is also reading Martin.

I hadn't considered bringing Penman because of the hugeosity, but I could bring it as my traveling day book.

SHORT STORIES

I don't read them enough, but when I do I enjoy them. Sci Fi is the best genre for short stories. Mysteries and romances need time to develop; but unlike SF movies that are just action flicks, SF books are about exploring ideas, and an interesting idea can be expressed quite economically in short story form.

When I was discovering sci fi I bought an unprepossessing book of short stories by an author I hadn't heard of, but who was lauded by all the big names. Avram Davidson became my fave ss writer--such weird little stories, and I never know how they're going to end.

You can read or download his story The Golem here. It's barely 5 pages and perfect.

“When you learn who—or, rather, what—I am, the flesh will melt from your bones in terror.” He bared porcelain teeth.

“Never mind about my bones!” the old woman cried. “You’ve got a lot of nerve talking about my bones!”

BOOKMARKS

Most of the bookmarks I've come across are bus transfers, napkins, bits of paper. But here are the more substantial ones, including a bookmark from Hatchard's in London (where the Georgette Heyer ladies would get their books!)

 

BOOK SMELL

When I come across old books, or ones that were my grandfather's, I smell them. (There's a second hand store in Nanaimo that should bottle their smell. I highly suspect they've got Eau de Second Hand Books diffusers hidden about.) I came across a set of Dumas that I couldn't remember getting from my Francophone pal Banane. Then I remembered my grandfather was in a French club in university, and sure enough the books smell like his old home. Startlingly so! Mmmmmm...

Tuckered out now, and the dust finally got to me today. But SFF is done. Tomorrow is plays, poetry, fave authors, and cleaning up a Miscellaneous Crap shelf. I would loooove some spring weather so I could throw open winders, but 55 F / 13C doesn't really cut it.

Happy Passover or Easter or belated Equinox or Merry Atheist Spring!