Arukiyomi

Context: My dad presented me with this and I read it while staying with him.

REVIEW
This pamphlet of a novella wasn’t anything remarkable. Never read any Banville but from this brief reading (97 pages), he comes across as a less-polished version of Colm Toibin (see esp. The Heather Blazing). Toibin writes with such pathos but Banville seemed to write with more smarm than pathos. Perhaps though, that was the point and I’m just ignorant. Seems more likely.
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Context: this was a gift for my niece which I read before placing under the tree for our belated Christmas celebration.

REVIEW
Selznick really cares that children capture the beauty of the world around them. This comes through very clearly not only in the story of Hugo Cabret but in the care that he has taken to put together an entire publication which will captivate the average child and give them all they need to get lost in a world of make-believe.
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Context: flowers from Kathy for Mrs Arukiyomi’s birthday which were decorating our room as I read this.

REVIEW
While everyone else was reading this in my childhood, I was tucking in to the Gulag Archipelago and Shogun. I missed out on the classics completely including so-called children’s classics of which this is about the first I’ve ever read.
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Context: Everyone was wrapping presents for Christmas while I read this. Lots of book-like shapes with my name on them there!

REVIEW
A fine piece of reportage which is only really spoiled by one thing: it tells it all pretty much from the viewpoint of the killers. In fact, it’s almost like he set out to ‘understand’ them objectively but forgot that, for those affected by the murders, it can be anything but.
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Context: read this in bits while watching Roy Keane equalise for Liverpool against Arsenal with the father-in-law.

REVIEW
On p161 out of the 176 pages of this novella, Winterton states “Everyone thinks their own situation most tragic. I am no exception.” And ain’t that the truth. I haven’t read a novel so fuelled by vitriol for a long while. This was written out of pain, frustration, anger, hurt, angst, rebellion and a host of other jolly emotions. As such, it’s hard to come away with it feeling much positive.

The subject matter is difficult: religiously-fuelled sexual prejudice against lesbianism. The problem is that, like most books that try to counteract prejudice, the novel comes off just as prejudiced as those they are lambasting. Winterton is no exception and that, I feel, is the weakness of this novel if it was her intention to create empathy for her own and others’ situations.
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Context: Read this in the tea shop of Reed’s in Downham Market with the in-law’s on the way to Susan’s funeral.

REVIEW
This is Captain Corelli’s Mandolin meets Walden if you can imagine that. For those who’ve not read either or one of those novels I’d better explain. In fact, thinking about it, I may well be the only person who has ever read both. I’ll satisfy myself with that status until someone comments otherwise
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Context: Finished this off just after we celebrated Mrs Arukiyomi’s parents’ 40th wedding anniversary.

REVIEW
An amazing book, made all the more poignant by the fact that it was her only published work. Mind you, at just over 1000 pages, you can understand why really. I know that many deride the story as being overly sentimental but I didn’t find it so. In fact, the next person that does so in my hearing will be challenged point blank as to whether they’ve read it. Bet they haven’t.

This book should be subtitled “A USAnian Pride & Prejudice” because…
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Context: Read large parts of this while doing a loooong backup on my laptop.

REVIEW
Now this is an interesting book. It’s interesting because, as far as I know, it’s a rare novel about the Fens. This is the area of the UK that I spent my first five years in and where my sister was born. Flat, flat, flat farmland - a curious landscape. And the landscape, as in Toibin’s The Heather Blazing and Wharton’s Ethan Frome plays a sinister part as any other in the story.
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Context: Failed to finish this as I was working through the final modules of my survey course.

REVIEW
Pants, pants, pants, pants, pants, pants, pants, pants, pants, pants, pants, pants, pants, pants, pants, pants, pants, pants, pants, pants, pants, pants, pants, pants, pants, pants, pants, pants, pants, pants, pants, pants, pants, pants, pants, pants, pants, pants, pants, pants, pants, pants, pants, pants, pants…
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Context: Read often with a bit of nourishment at Wycliffe.

REVIEW
When Arukiyomi was a mere early teen, he read The French Lieutenant’s Woman. Didn’t understand it much but liked the story. Decades later, he’s read The Magus by the same author simply because it’s on the 1001 books list and he found it pretty cheap in a charity shop.

Glad he did. Actually, it was a very strange experience to read this book at the moment. It’s one of those moments in your literary life when there’s an eerie reflection of your present reality in fiction. Let me tell you more…
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Context: Finished this (first edition) off the day we made a massive £7 at a car boot sale.

REVIEW
I really liked this but had a really hard time trying to pin down exactly why. I’ve read Garp and didn’t really enjoy that at all. What I think got me here was the way the whole story was tinged with a kind of melancholy.
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Context: Read this as we celebrated 14 years married and got some flowers from the in-laws.

REVIEW
A moving and powerful account made all the more poignant by the background of the original manuscript. We almost didn’t have this book.
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Context: Finished this as we prepared to do some car-boot sales to get rid of stuff prior to moving to PNG.

REVIEW
My second Kundera novel after The Book of Laughter and Forgetting and this was certainly an improvement on that, not that I thought that was hard. There are writers who embed their philosophies in narratives they create. Then there are writers, like Kundera, who embed their narratives in philosophies they create.
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I’ve just tallied last month’s download totals of the new spreadsheet versions. They come to about 2000 downloads.

The observant among you will have noticed that I’ve set things up so that clicking through and buying through amazon will earn me a little bit from each purchase. Thing is, I’ve noticed that if you do that and then click on product descriptions on the pages you’re directed to on amazon, my little tag in the URL that should credit me disappears.

If the customer clicks around enough looking at products once they’re through to the amazon site, the link between me sending them to the site and the site itself gets broken. In other words, amazon seem to have it nicely worked out that unless someone buys directly from my little page, I get squat and they profit by my advertising at no cost to themselves.

So, that’s my theory. Call it a conspiracy one if you like.

To test this, I wonder if anyone out there who’s downloaded the spreadsheet and actually bought something using one of my links could let me know.

If you have, my theory is absolutely correct and amazon SUCK. If not, no one’s bought anything and the total of $0.00 on my account is absolutely accurate. But then that’s kind of sad too

So, anyone care to own up to actually buying anything through one of my links?

Context: Finished this off in an afternoon in my room at the Wycliffe centre.

REVIEW
Wow. Little books (127 pages in my edition from the 50s) can certainly pack some punch and this is one of the hardest hitting. It’s not an uplifting read by any means but, having read it, I’m surprised it was removed from the 2008 revised edition of the 1001 list.
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Context: Finished off this on my bed at the Wycliffe centre.

REVIEW
An amazing book that, for a first novel, is a great feat of literature. There’s so much going on that it’s very hard to review it concisely.
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Context: Finished this off in bed at the in-laws’

REVIEW
Never read any Balzac but certainly will do again. This is a lovely period piece that gives you a great insight into 19th century rural France.
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Context: Finished this off on my bed as a migraine kicked in.

REVIEW
It’s going to be a while before I read another “classic American novel.” One of the few things that I was thankful for while reading this was that it was half the length of Underworld by DeLillo. Apart from that, there wasn’t much else that impressed me.
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Context: Read this as I hitch-hiked into and back from Cambridge.

REVIEW
This is a novel that many people have had spoiled as it is, or at least used to be, required reading for secondary school in the UK. But thankfully, I never read it there. I read it just now and I’m glad I did.
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