Kolinahr

Oh, I'm glad that I've inspired you to give it another go, and hopefully my information is applicable to this particular work, because it has been a little while since I read about this tradition, and I sadly don't remember exactly which novels followed it.

Temperatures finally falling from a daily average of 48 Celsius (118 F) to about 43 (109 F) today. Right now at one in the morning, it's a cool and breezy 38 (100 F). But it's the intense humidity that is usually the worst and keeps everyone indoors (where you can breathe) most of the day, and I'm delighted to say that we are no longer inhaling clouds, at least for the moment.

An alien notion, to be sure.

And weight! In the past, my book collections have numbered in the many hundreds, which means that every time I've moved long distance I've had to make hard choices about what to bring along and what to send to the used book shops. The parting is always an agony!

Thanks for all of your warm welcomes.

I'm sure you would love it! And thank you.

Apropos essays versus plots, I recall reading at one point that many of these lengthy Russian novels actually are meant to be consumed much like philosophical and political tracts. Apparently 19th century Russian government often didn't permit a great deal of social criticism from its literati, so instead of writing straight up analyses of current events, people would often write coded novels addressing the issues in a round about sort of way. The drawback of course is that for us, removed from social context, the lengthy philosophical passages may induce drowsiness, while a contemporary of the author would instantly be aware of the real subject under discussion.

Hmm, might have to give this one a try after reading these reviews. I also thought that this book might be a bit light-hearted and comedic, as someone mentioned further back in the thread, but upon learning that it's a lot darker and more psychological than this, I can't help thinking of all of the terrible suffering implied in the Potter books, much of which was excused or given lesser weight through the children's fantasy medium. And yet I can hardly think of a more vividly terrible backstory than Voldemort's-- a combination of the horrors of poverty, abuse, neglect and resultant childhood trauma creating a man who, in combination with the magical conditions of his birth and the transformation he inflicted on himself before being mature enough to fully digest the consequences, possibly operates within the most tragically constrained conditions of free will in the entire fantasy-villain retinue. He also garners somewhere along on lines of zero sympathy from the other characters, even after they discover all of this, which just adds to how depressing his life story is. Then of course there is Snape's awful, depressing backstory, Dumbledore's, Sirius', and Harry's own, among many, many others, and basically there isn't a man, woman or child in the entire series who hasn't endured some kind of horrific psychological or physical torture...frankly I don't know why I expect any kind of light fare from Rowling, come to think of it...

I enjoy Murakami and have read a number of his books, and yet have a kind of peculiar amnesia when it comes to him, such that I've pretty well stopped buying his work. Every time I read one of his books it instantly disappears from my mind the moment I finish it. Even 1Q84, which I felt great enthusiasm due to some of its themes overlapping with profound changes in my life at the time of reading, has more or less completely vanished from my memory. I suspect the phenomenon has something to do with the surreal quality of his works, the nebulous nature of his characters. I appreciate these in theory, but these characteristics fail to encode concrete impressions in memory.

Oh God. Ayn Rand. Just the thought of her (very) thinly-disguised propaganda pamphlets about the intense moral depravity of helping the poor is enough to make me want to flip tables. I read Atlas Shrugged more than sixteen years ago and I still get tense and angry just at the mention. Never again.

This is always interesting to see, though I will admit to book blasphemy and say I love it even more when I see that someone has scrawled notes on the pages. Both this and the scraps of paper make me think about who these people are or may have been. Reminds me of 'object journey' stories like Annie Proulx's Accordion Crimes, too.

Hello, I'm FJ. Very pleased to be here and find a great forum for discussing books. I'm an avid lifelong reader, though currently experiencing a bit of difficulty accessing a wide range of titles, since I moved to the UAE where all English language books are very expensive imports with a bit of a limited selection. For this reason I've started reading more ebooks, and while it's not as enjoyable as having a physical copy, it's what gets me through the night. I enjoy a wide range of genres, with a focus on sci-fi/fantasy, poetry, psychological/character pieces, plays, non-fiction and graphic novels.

It's been a few years since I've read Lolita, but for me this book is a very clear example of the unreliable narrator technique. Humbert portrays Lolita as a seductress in his own mind, while for the most part she's oblivious to this, her 'seductive' behaviour largely filtered through and inventive by Humbert's paedophile mind. It's a more extreme version of how men often perceive flirtatious or sexualised behaviour in women who themselves only intend to be friendly or social, and a great exploration of the psychology of self-justifying criminal behaviour. That said, does anyone else see similarities between this book's treatment of Lolita and the treatment of Alice in Patrick Marber's play (and later film) Closer? Both are seen through the exploitative lens of male admiration, and both suffer for it. I would not be surprised if Marber took some direct inspiration from Nabokov's opus.