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Hopscotch - Julio Cortazar This novel has become part of the literary canon of 20th century literature. It's experimental in form. A reader can choose to read the first 56 chapters (where the essentials of the story are told) and forget the additional 100 short chapters (which expand the story). Or, read it hopscotch style which begins chapters 73-1-2-116-3-84 and so on. I chose this second approach, it wasn't as off-putting as you might expect. I had more trouble connecting with the story line, a heavy dose of 1950s style bohemian alienation. The Clown - Heinrich Boll The protagonist is similar to the one in Hopscotch. He can't cope, whines too much, is deeply estranged from the norms of his society. He is doomed by his ideal of romantic love, an ideal he himself deliberately destroys. Both novels have great literary qualities, well worth reading, beloved by many. I just have problems enduring self-obsessed, self-pitying (anti-) heroes. A Dreambook For Our Time - Tadeusz Konwicki The protagonist here suffers authentic angst, withstanding the Nazi and the Bolshevik onslaught as they ravage Poland in WWII. Life and death decisions had to be made almost every day. Imaginative, mesmerizing, and mysterious are some adjectives that apply to this great novel. The central question confronted is how is it possible to go on and live a sane life when one's memories are swarming with confusion and trauma. An overwhelming reading experience for me. Capital in the 21st Century - Thomas Piketty An extraordinary study, prodigiously researched, profoundly depressing, explaining the root causes of income inequality in the wealthy countries during the last couple of centuries through to the present day. In the USA example, the current steep curve toward the greatest inequality ever known has little braking interference. The egalatarian spirit which once flourished has been dead in the water since the Reagan Revolution. We're becoming the country we once rebelled against - an 18th century England with an entrenched aristocracy who owned all the land, the US in the 21st century with an entrenched super-plutocracy who will have all the wealth due to minimally taxed financial windfalls. Piketty, who wrote this for the general public rather than other economists, offers some solutions but they seem utopian in today's cynical climate. The winds of change can shift unexpectedly and quickly, but not likely anytime soon.

I have never read any of Bill James' books. Putting him to the top of my mystery wish list. Thanks. One of my favorite Thompson novels is Pop. 1280. The adaptation of that novel was called Coup de Torchon with Phillipe Noiret and Isabelle Hupert directed by Bernard Tavernier. It's a full fledged masterpiece by any standard. Tavernier changed the location from the American South-West to Africa in a great example of a successful transition of book to film.

When the World Spoke French - Marc Fumaroli In the 18th century almost all educated people of the western world spoke French. This book surveys many of the significant figures of the time in indelible portraits, including Benjamin Franklin whose time in Paris far exceeded what I remembered and whose celebrity status rivalled Voltaire's. Each chapter ends in examples of their letters and diaries (people expressed themselves so well in those days) originally written in French despite the nationality. Although this is a very learned history with many references going way over my head, there is still much left for the general reader, it's actually entertaining in spots, with a magnificent translation by the poet Richard Howard. The Captive - Marcel Proust Volume five of In Search of Lost Time. Some say you only need to read the first four volumes because the last three were released posthumously without Proust's final revisions. But I'm glad I soldiered on as the story is getting progressively strange and interesting. Poor Albertine is being kept as a (semi) captive at the narrator's house. He spends most of the first 200 pages analyzing the level of Albertine's mendacity (he believes she is untruthful in her denials of her attraction toward other women). Their relationship never fully rings true but his monumental male jealousy sure does. Each volume features a long set piece, a dinner party usually, and there is a great one in The Captive full of delicious satire and intrigue. Then Proust offers a cliffhanger ending worthy of a 30s Hollywood serial. The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea - Yukio Mishima There is a dreadful scene early on in which a band of disturbed young boys kill and disembowel a kitten. I finished the novel because it has literary value, but no more Mishima for me. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath Plath (like Mishima) was a death by suicide author. This is her only novel, and I found it surprisingly lightweight and comic given the tragic contours of her life. Plath's account of her stay in the asylum reminded me that I lived through a time when electric shock treatments and lobotomies were administered to the severely depressed. Hard to believe. The Grifters - Jim Thompson Thompson is sometimes described as the "dimestore Dostoevsky" of pulp fiction. The small-time con-man hero is beset by the strategems of his devious and deadly mother, as well as by a devious and deadly mother figure. An Oedipal conflict times two! But compared to the other Thompson novels I've read, The Grifters is relatively sane. His weirdly memorable books became popular with moviemakers in the 90s, and The Grifters adaptation with Anjelica Huston and John Cusack is much the best of them. The Double - Fyodor Dostoevsky Here's the real Dostoevsky in a short novel written before all the chunky masterpieces. I'm a sucker for the doppleganger theme, I often wonder if there is another me out there (people have told me Alan Alda!). Mr. D. in later years found this early work pretty awful, but Nabokov (who generally disparaged Dostoevsky) hailed it as "perfect". I'd say near-perfect.

I've taken a half dozen coursera.org courses and enjoyed them all. Arnold Weinstein of Brown University offered a course on literature that was a hundred times better than any literature course I experienced in college. They have been replaying some courses, so it may be available again. You can watch the lectures only, or participate in quizzes and peer reviewed essays, and the discussion boards are really interesting with posters from around the world. And it's free! .

The Good Life Elsewhere - Vladimir Lorchenko Moldova is one of the poorest countries in Europe. As depicted in this novel, the population is demoralized and eager to escape. Italy, with its supposed high wages for menial work, becomes in their imagination, the Promised Land. Priests form Crusades with thousands of pilgrims armed for illegal entry on horseback. Others build makeshift airplanes and submarines from the rusty remains of farm tractors for their journey. It's Marx Bros. type insanity, where all the elaborate gags, unfortunately, have tragic endings. Definitely, Maybe - Arkady and Boris Strugatsky A short, Soviet-era sci-fi novel that takes place in one apartment building occupied by scientists and mathematicians who have ventured too close in their work to uncovering secrets which some entity (alien?) wants them to stay clear of. It's a series of conversations with the victims sitting around a table trying to size up their options. Do I yield to the powers and abandon my life's work, or not? It's a bit too static and claustrophobic (probably intentionally) but the embedded sub-texts, that were necessary for literature from this era, are sure interesting. The Gray Notebook - Josep Pla Pla was a Catalonian writer who chronicled the major events of the 20th century in his journalism and essays. When he was 21-22 years old in 1918-19 he kept a journal, set both in Barcelona where he was finishing up his law degree, and back in his small home town where he seeks refuge from the great influenza epidemic that followed WWI. The journal was re-worked and polished decades later. I found it spellbinding, striking some of the deepest chords I've encountered in describing what it feels like to be young, disappointed with oneself, unable to see a discernible future in ones dream (for Pla, writing) but still so alive, with a sense of wonder, to the world around him. This is the first English translation of his works (thanks nyrb), it's so unique, hopefully more of his 40 volume collected works will be translated. Boy, Snow, Bird - Helen Oyeyemi Boy (a girl, 20yrs old) escapes the clutches of her abusive rat-catching father in NYC. She takes the next bus to the end of the line, which turns out to be a small Massachusetts town. Set in the 1950s, the first half is a meandering portrait of the town, with Boy slowly fitting in to its peculiar rhythms, marrying a widower who has a secret, not revealed until Boy has his child. Oyeyemi has ambitions to create a modern fairy tale (Snow White) concerning racial and gender identity. But there's too many awkward plot contrivances and sketchy character motivations to lend much weight to her design. One of those novels that really should have been longer and more developed. A Woman Named Drown - Padgett Powell A road novel set in the deep South full of quirky people, funky adventures, and lots and lots of booze. The humor is rich in spots, but there is no normal to counter the relentless zaniness and the shenanigans soon sink into a numbing tediousness.

The Fat Years - Chan Koonchung Life in China in the new millennium. The plot has some sci-fi elements, but mostly it's about a group of dissidents trying to discover just how the Communist Party regime has managed to pacify China's giant population. The novel doesn't satisfy as a thriller, burdened as it is with some dense economic discussions. The group end up kidnapping a high Party honcho hoping they'll force him to divulge some inside info. Instead he gives them a humbling, realistic lecture on the demands of the new world order, convincingly defending the absolute (and practical) need for authoritarian rule. The kidnappers are stunned by the logic of his arguments. As our western democracies recover (hopefully) from some significant bumps in the road, it may be beneficial to ponder the appeal of this alternative approach to the future. The Rebel Angels - Robertson Davies The first volume of The Cornish Trilogy, a dark satire of higher learning, a novel of ideas as well as an intellectual romance. It's set in an Anglican university in Canada full of scholarly jealousy, envy and ultimately murder (gypsies, too). Very entertaining. Three Masters: Balzac, Dickens, Dostoevsky - Stefan Zweig An ecstatic homage from one novelist to his literary heroes. I purchased this mostly for the Dostoevsky chapters. His dark brooding, the questioning of God/no God etc. perplex my relatively rosy imagination. Zweig supplies some interesting perspectives and infectious enthusiasm needed for my soon-to-be reading of The Idiot. Beauty on Earth - Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz Ramuz was a Swiss novelist who wrote in French in the first half of the 20th century. An 18 year old beauty, raised in Cuba, orphaned by the death of her father, travels to a mountainous Swiss village to live with her uncle. Her presence disrupts the tranquility of the village, her beauty sought after by every man in sight. Ramuz had a unique style with powerful painterly imagery, impressionistic, somewhat similar to Virginia Woolf. Dept. of Speculation - Jenny Offill Love. Marriage. Children. Adultery. It's an oft-told tale. Offill eshews the straightforward approach, offering instead a scrapbook of memories, quotes, poetic interludes, advice. The central question of modern life - "How does it feel?" - is confronted. The novel is short, can be read in a couple of hours, and, despite the slightness, much of it is quite affecting.

The central section of Willa Cather's The Professor's House is a fictional account of the discovery and exploration of a ancient cliff dwelling in New Mexico set in the early part of the 20th century. It has some great descriptions and can be read as a stand alone. .

Daniel Deronda - George Eliot One of the aspects of 19th century novels that I love is how artistic the overall contours often are, especially with Eliot. I was disappointed with Daniel Deronda, but I can't stop thinking about Eliot's intentions and designs. The brilliant first chapter encapsulates much of what I most liked - Gwendolen at the roulette wheel ("everything in life is a gamble"), under Deronda's disapproving gaze (he's a stranger to her then), which shakes her, and compels her to question her shaky moral code. This initial encounter is replayed in various guises thereafter. Unfortunately, Eliot overindulges her tendencies to philosophize, and much of the dialogue struck me as stilted and overwrought. It's really two novels, the heavy philosophy and dense discussions of Zionism (and the saintly Jewish characters) being one, and the familiar Victorian marriage-and-money plot the other (should Gwendelon marry a cold hearted aristocrat to save her family from poverty?). When the two strands intersect in the Deronda/Gwendelon scenes, they achieve such a bizarre intensity that they overshadow the rest. Speedboat - Renata Adler In the afterword Adler is quoted as saying that when she began to write fiction, she wanted to employ the traditional type narratives (presumably Eliot's among them) that she so enjoyed reading. But she found herself unable to do this, those intentions didn't jibe with what she felt as the fractured nature of modern life. In Speedboat she replaces the timeworn conventions with a dizzying pile-up of short disconnected anecdotes, packed with irony and alienation. Each one is entertaining and readable, but I can't recall any of them after only a few days. Hidden deeply between the lines exists a barely discernible plot, but with no real emotional payoff, it doesn't resonate. An Armenian Sketchbook - Vasily Grossman Grossman had written a large novel (Life and Fate, 1961) that was critical of the Soviet system. When the censors got hold of it, they put the novel in jail, and banished the novelist to Armenia. He was to translate a thousand page epic into Russian even though he knew not a word of the Armenian language. When he arrives in the capital, Yerevan, he is stunned by an enormous statue of Stalin, constructed on a hilltop (Stalin's head caressed by the clouds), oppressively dominating every sightline in the city. The last chapter is a long, fascinating account of a traditional Armenian-style wedding, in which Grossman beautifully evokes the human impulse to brotherhood, a primal feeling beyond the talons of even the most horrible of despots. Grossman sadly didn't live long enough to see the liberation of Life and Fate, which is now considered one of the great novels of 20th century Russian literature.

^ And for anyone who wants to take the plunge into Proust, I recommend the modern Lydia Davis translation of Swann's Way to start off. I've sampled a bit of it, and it is significantly more readable than the older translations.

Fortunata and Jacinta - Benito Perez Galdos Two women in 1870s Madrid. Jacinta, who comes from a wealthy upper class family, marries her cousin, a handsome, charming man about town. The other woman, Fortunata, comes from the lower classes. Her beauty enraptures every man who gazes upon her, including Jacinta's husband, who turns out to be quite the selfish cad. The novel concerns the intertwining of the two women's lives, but it is also a fascinating panorama of Spanish culture teeming with vivid characters. Every page comes alive under Galdos's unique artistic power. Many scholars have proclaimed this the best Spanish novel of the 19th century. For me it's simply one of the greatest novels I've ever read. Domestic Manners of the Americans - Fanny Trollope A nearly destitute Mrs Trollope comes to the US with three of her children in hand (son Anthony stays behind in England) attempting to make her fortune. She settles in Cincinnati for two years (1828-29), but her business fails, and after further travels on the east coast she returns to England to write what turns out to be the first of many bestsellers. She does not like America to put it mildly (too much tobacco spitting, whiskey drinking, and uncouth manners). Liberal reform is in the air back in England, and this book seems to be written as an aristocratic screed warning the British public of the pernicious consequences that resulted from following Thomas Jefferson and his idiotic ideas of equality and democracy. In between the diatribes, however, exists some beautiful examples of travel literature. The trip (1830) up the Hudson River Valley, across the Erie Canal to Niagara Falls is magically evoked. And I'm afraid Trollope captures elements of the 19th century American character (as she sees it) that may have lingered on, into the 21st century - an excess of materialism, a tendency to religious extremism, a need to proclaim superiority over all other orders of civilization, along with a need for all others to confirm this superiority. Two Serious Ladies - Jane Bowles These two serious ladies jump the rails, leaving their safe and secure lives behind, to drift into whatever comes their way. I had difficulty locating the beat of their adventures, as the impulse to self-obliteration puzzles me. Jane's husband Paul wrote a more famous novel, The Sheltering Sky, and if you have read that, or seen the movie, think of Kit's (Debra Winger) quixotic behavior after Port (John Malkovic) dies, and you'll get the idea. Jane wrote terrific dialogue so her only novel is still entertaining in a weird sort of way. The Edwardians - Vita Sackville-West A young Duke in early 1900s England wants to jump the rails, too. He feels suffocated by what's expected of him, the rigid life that is planned out for him. He's excited by the modern world, wants to find his way in it, have new experiences, rather than drown in the hoary old feudal past. There are some beautiful descriptions of his great estate (a fictionalized version of Sackville-West's ancestral home, Knole House) which the Duke truly loves, so his dilemma is intense. Sackville-West would in later years disparage this novel (her most popular), but I found it very satisfying in a Masterpiece Theater-ish sort of way. Voltaire In Love - Nancy Mitford Voltaire's enduring love, Emilie, was his intellectual equal. She translated Issac Newton at a time when his ideas were disbelieved among French scientists. She also studied and wrote books on philosophy, amazing accomplishments for a woman of her day. The couple were devoted to each other for decades. Emilie was married to a Duke, who accepted the dicey situation, and the three of them lived comfortably together for most of those years. When Voltaire tells Emilie that he is no longer capable of physical love, she takes on new lovers. Voltaire had actually become besotted with his niece, who soon becomes his lover (unbeknowst to Emilie). No middle-class morality for French aristocrats of the 18th century! Voltaire is one of the all-time great charismatic celebrities, and Mitford captures him (and Emilie) well in her short pop history.

If I recall Eliot's version of the story correctly, Savonarola started having second thoughts about the trial and hesitated at the appointed hour. He was literally going to walk the plank through a sea of flames and emerge unscathed to confirm his holiness. When he was a no-show, the crowd grew impatient and restive. Savonarola had been whipping them into a religious frenzy for weeks with his severe, mystical fundamentalist vision, hence the burning of vanities. When the rains came and still no Savonarola, his enemies in the priesthood who resented his new autocratic rule were able to quickly turn the frenzy and hysteria of the crowds against him. To use another medieval term, Savonarola was "hoisted by his own petard".

Savonarola's Bonfire of the Vanities, Frankie, figures prominently in George Eliot's great historical novel, Romola (made my Top Ten last year). Savonarola then is about to voluntarily subject himself to a Trial by Fire in order to prove to the citizenry that he is indeed an emissary of Divine Will. But right before the trial begins, it starts to rain (no Weather Channel to consult in those days!) which douses the flames. The citizenry interpret this rain as a sign of God's displeasure with Savonarola, so they hang him.

Palace Walk - Naguib Mahfouz Mahfouz was the first (and is still the only) Arab writer to win the Nobel Prize. Palace Walk is the first novel of his Cairo Trilogy. It's a family chronicle, set in the years immediately following WWI. Egypt is occupied by British forces who cause widespread unrest when they exile a popular Sultan for demanding independence. But this is at heart an intimate portrait of a middle class family ruled by an absolute dictator, patriarchal omnipotence at it's most extreme. Mother and daughters are virtual prisoners in their own house. The father is feared but worshipped, as the family members believe him to be benevolent at heart. He's also a hypocrite, enjoying a licentious personal life outside the conservative morality of his home. He may be a tough character to endure, but the novel is mostly absorbing, even though Mahfouz overloads the last 100 pages with too many momentous events. The Lily of the Valley - Honore de Balzac The other six Balzac novels I've read were feverish, but this entry in his Human Comedy is just plain crazy. A young aristocrat recovering from a dysfunctional childhood (Mama didn't love him) falls in love with an older married woman, a Duchess. She is saddled with a mentally unbalanced husband who verbally abuses her, and two sickly children. The love affair that ensues is otherwordly, as the lovers passion is never consummated while many years go by. Rarely has romantic obsession been so intensely portrayed, its destructiveness so powerfully revealed. Balzac has yet to disappoint me with his endings, this one is superb. The Wicked Pavilion - Dawn Powell Powell employs a deft comic touch, and a skillfulness in the art of irony, as a bevy of loosely connected characters, searching for something tangible in the ether of life, revolve around a soon to be shuttered, memory haunted Greenwich Village eatery. Powell is at her best in evoking the boozy zeitgeist of NYC circa 1940s-50s. There is a sweetness to her vision that I barely noticed in the other Powell novel I've read, A Time to Be Born. Highly recommended.

How Proust Can Change Your Life - Alain de Botton Doesn't quite live up to its title but chock full of fascinating anecdotes and insights, inspiring me on to vol5, The Captive. I'm not convinced a book can change one's life but it can heighten one's perception of the world around us, as Proust's novels surely do. Botton's chapter on how Proust encourages us to recognize the beauty in the everyday and seemingly banal, of developing one's own sense of discovery, is a pip. If you ever get the urge to climb the literary mountain of In Search of Lost Time, Botton provides an excellent entry point. (thanx, frankie, for the recommend) The League of Frightened Men - Rex Stout When respite is needed from hi-brow stuff these mysteries are the ticket. Even William Faulkner reportedly was a fan. League is the second of the Nero Wolfe series, and includes the very rare occurence of the rotund and normally harsh, reclusive Wolfe leaving his brownstone and venturing out into the real world. All to save sidekick Archie who is quite touched by the unexpected concern. The finale is full of surprises. The Women in Black - Madeleine St. John Shopgirls struggling in 50s Sydney, employed (wearing black uniforms) in the women's fancy frock section of a fashionable department store. We have an unhappy wife with a clod of a husband, a panicky near-spinster, and a brilliant young temp whose father doesn't believe in women being educated. It's Christmas time and the workday world of the retail rush is expertly captured. Even more remarkable, St. John, in her first novel (published when she was 52), and in a festive spirit, warmly bestows happiness upon her heroines in satisfying ways.

Twain was only 32 when he made this trip sending back dispatches to a NYC paper. He was already famous for his columns and also for a short story called The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County which was a world-wide sensation by the time Innocents was published. And thanks, Athena.

The Innocents Abroad - Mark Twain Twain and sixty-five companions embark from NYC to the Mediterrean on an 1867 version of a cruise ship. They tour much of Europe although the main goal is the Holy Land. Twain can be so cynical and snarky that he often seems more a character of today than yesteryear. He delights in debunking romantic notions of exotic sounding places and is pretty much displeased with everything and everybody he encounters. Thankfully he is also very, very funny, at times reminiscent of a stand-up comedian. One has to look between the lines of the relentless schtick to glimpse the caring human that Twain certainly was. The abject poverty encountered from Constantinople through the Holy Land and Egypt is stunning. Infectious disease (especially cholera) is feared, so the ship must endure a week of quarantine at many ports before passengers are allowed to go ashore. These facts add much to the flavor of the way the world once was, which Twain is very skillful at evoking. I was sad when the journey was completed as Twain had become the kind of friend you immediately miss, so I'll be reading Life on the Mississippi and Roughing It sometime soon. Havana Red - Leonardo Padura A transvestite is found strangled to death in the woods on the outskirts of Havana. A police procedural ensues but as this is a literary detective novel the genre stuff is mostly perfunctory. Padura is more interested in exploring the depths of male gloom, told in overheated prose, including one of the most ludicrously described sex scenes I've ever read, even after allowances are granted to middle-aged novelists sitting alone in their studies for too many hours. You do get some rare glimpses (for me at least) of a society that seems stuck in a time warp. An interesting dilemma is faced - should I abandon the place (exile) or stick around to see if change will ever come. One of the characters is a world renowned dramatist who has been silenced because of his homosexuality. He chooses to stay and continues to write, without an audience, finding solace in the prospect that he and his works will be long remembered even as the sordid politicos are long forgotten.

Gore Vidal once said that people only read the first and last paragraph of reviews. Which is pretty much what I do when I read professional reviews. I find it impossible to follow synopses and even more impossible to write them. It's an interesting challenge to condense one's thoughts to a few sentences and still say something interesting.

Fer-de-Lance - Rex Stout The first of the Nero Wolfe mysteries published in 1934. The series is an interesting intersection of the Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot brilliantly deductive sleuth (Wolfe, who never leaves his NYC brownstone), and the hard-boiled street smart detective (sidekick Archie Goodwin) who anticipates Philip Marlowe and Lew Archer. Their debut includes an ingeniously imagined murder weapon (a deadly modified golf club) and an epic battle with a Fer-de-Lance (a giant venomous South American snake) in Wolfe's sacrosanct study. The relationship between Wolfe and Archie is often a battlefield itself- Wolfe crowing over his genius with "phenomena" while belittling Archie's lack of imagination, Archie seeing through all of Wolfe's pretensions and ethically dubious stratagems. But they also need each other in some compelling ways ( father/son, shared sanctuary from a disordered world) and that is what propels the novels. .

Old Filth - Jane Gardam Failed In London Try Hong Kong, an acronymn for the main character, Edward Feathers. We follow him in his dotage as he surveys his life - from traumatized Raj orphan (based on Rudyard Kipling's experiences) to celebrated magistrate in the Far East. Gardam tells his story in a non-linear fashion which conveys much of the scope of the 20th century. Although many of the sub-characters are developed quickly and well, Feathers himself seemed incomplete. Luckily there are two more volumes (another trilogy!), one from the point of view of his wife, the third from the point of view of his wife's lover (whom Old Filth appears to be unaware of) to hopefully complete the picture. A Peace To End All Peace: The Fall of The Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East - David Fromkin Fascinating portraits of Kitchner, Churchill, Lawrence and especially Lloyd George. The story is told mostly from the British side appropriately as they were the main players in slicing up the middle east into countries we know today as Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan and Iraq. The chutzpah of much of their imperialistic thinking is stunning with little knowledge of or real concern for the peoples they were carving away at. Another truly enlightening history read, the section on Gallipoli is superb. The Time Regulation Institute - Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar I found the satire of bureaucracy often inspired and hilarious. And that's with missing much, I'm sure, of targets familiar and resonant with Turkish readers. I thought the whole idea of a wildly successful government Institute that ensures and enforces that all clocks and watches are displaying the precise time to be irritatingly far-fetched, but research revealed that before Ataturk wrenched Turkey into a more efficient modernity, time was measured only by calls to prayer, it otherwise had limited meaning. I kept having problems recalling the large cast, my memory for foreign names being weak. But I think also that Tanpinar overloaded each character with eccentricities, forming a sea of quirky behaviors, hard to tell one from another. The novel rambles a bit, occasionally plods, but there are some genuine moments of pathos. I didn't feel the masterpiece goose bumps that some of my betters did, but its humor and thematic richness made it well worth reading.

Sodom and Gomorrah - Marcel Proust I got along much better with this modern Sturrock translation than I had with the Scott-Moncriefs of the previous three volumes. Although I still at times put it down feeling a bit suffocated, it was more eventful, more Albertine, more humor. I've also reached the point (probably long since) of immersion, that lulls one in long, long novels, inhabiting a world that will be remembered vividly, the whole more satisfying than many of the parts. .

How to Live: Or a Life of Montaigne - Sarah Bakewell An entertaining and informative biography, exuberantly free-wheeling apropos its subject. I can't imagine a better introduction to his work. Montaigne lived through the calamitous times of late 16th century France - Catholic/Protestant civil wars of unbelievable brutality; plague years in which Bordeaux while Montaigne was Mayor suffered 14,000 deaths one summer, one third of the population. Yet the essays celebrate moderation, curiosity, reflection, not taking one's opinion too seriously, learning how to live a full and happy life. Montaigne was an ancestor of the Stoics and the Skeptics, and had little interest in abstract philosophy, or theology (which would in later times get the Essays banned by the Church for over 200 years even though Montaigne was a practicing Catholic in good standing during his lifetime). He was immediately translated into English, and most certainly read by Shakespeare. Scholars have pointed out passages from Hamlet and The Tempest that are nearly exact dupes of passages from Montaigne. I've downloaded a modern translation, all 1330 pages, of the essays, planning on reading a few a week. The Naked Eye - Yoko Tawada A Vietnamese high school girl travels to East Berlin in the waning years of the evil empire to deliver a speech on American Imperialism. She gets abducted by a West German student, eventually escapes to Paris where she becomes obessesed with Catherine Deneuve movies. She is sheltered by various good samaritans but never really makes an effort to return home, which was a major stumbling block for me, believability-wise. But the prose (Susan Bernofsky, trans.) is excellent, and if you like Catherine Deneuve movies (many connections made between the plots and the heroines struggles) it might be worth a try. Tawada interestingly wrote this in both a German and Japanese language version, this translation is from the German.

Sea and Sardinia - D.H. Lawrence Lawrence is living in Sicily post WWI, and decides to visit Sardinia, the large mountainous island off the west coast of Italy. He is such a cranky fellow, from the get go, and I wasn't sure what kind of trip this was going to be. His German wife, Frieda, travels with him, and is referred to as the "Queen Bee" at the start the "q-b" thereafter. She puts him in his place at points and I wish there had been more of her. But Lawrence is so good at chronicling the logistics of travel circa 1921, by ship, by train, by bus, some of it pretty suspenseful. His misanthropy keeps getting in the way, but there are also compensations with lyrical passages of land and sea scapes. Even his crankiness began to seem funny if not quite endearing. The book ends, satisfyingly, with a magical description of a midnight marionette show. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte Propulsive story telling. I was previously only familiar with the Olivier/Oberon film classic which covered Book One and none of the Cathy/Heathcliff childrens story of Book Two. Heathcliff's sadism is raised to new levels in this section and I couldn't help wondering what he might have represented in Bronte's feverish 28 year old imagination. I also marvelled at the confinement theme, with little chance of escape from the woeful Heights, and even the happy (at times) Thrushcross Grange seemed a prison, isolated and remote. All to play out deadly family entanglements (I had to pause at times to sort out the various parentages) in a most creative manner.

The Cardboard Crown - Martin Boyd Published in 1952, this is a fictionalized chronicle of Boyd's family, the first volume of a quartet. There's lots of genealogy to sort through, but once the novel settles down and focuses on his fascinating grandmother, it became a page turner. The family is torn between the openness of the land of their birth, Australia, and the elegance of their English ancestery, and their craving for European high society. They make frequent trips back and forth at a time when such trips were often treacherous. The grandmother is a strong matriarchal figure, benevolently ruling over a large clan, but is silently haunted by family secrets and dwindling funds. I'll definitely be reading the subsequent volumes. The Ravishing of Lol Stein - Marguerite Duras Lol is an eighteen year old girl who one night attends a town ball with her fiance. The scamp meets a new woman and spends the night dancing with her, while Lol watches in horror at her jilting, and descends into madness. Her best friend believes that Lol has always been mad, while the narrator, a future lover, doubts that she has ever been mad. Sexual attraction is depicted as becoming instantaneously spellbound, a fall into a kind of deathly abyss. Enigmatic, cryptic, disorienting are appropriate adjectives, but I got caught up in it and finished in one sitting. It has rekindled my latent nostalgia for the heyday of the European Art Film. I've seen a couple of Duras directed movies but I'm really hankering for the Duras scripted, Resnais directed Hiroshima Mon Amour which I don't think I've seen in, gasp, almost 50 years, but I remember it well. The Magic Lantern of Marcel Proust: A Critical Study of Remembrance of Things Past - Howard Ross I chose this to kick start my reading of vol4, Sodom and Gomorrah. It's a beautiful book (Ross was the poetry editor of New Yorker magazine and won a Pulitzer for a volume of his own poetry), and I think it got the job done. The last chapter, a meditation on how time = memory, is worthy of a re-read. Many of his insights into the novels were recognizable to me, only Ross managed to feel them more deeply. I suspect I actually enjoy reading about Proust more than I do reading Proust. There were no spoiler alerts, and ironically it may be that old-fashioned thing called plot (I was surprised at some of what happens in the ensuing volumes) rather than the prospect of many more exquisite perceptions, that will keep me going.

al-Afghani alternated his answers to those questions, Paul, with a variety of approaches - secular Islam, pan-Islam, nationalism and some more, none of which he could gain ground with. Among his more interesting observations, vis-a-vis the Christian world, was that Islam had not experienced a Reformation, no Martin Luther, no Enlightenment.

The Ingenious Gentleman and Poet Federico García Lorca Ascends to Hell - Carlos Rojas The poet and dramatist Lorca was a huge celebrity and only 38 years old when he was executed by the Fascists in the early days of the Spanish Civil War. He finds himself post-death in an empty theater watching the events of his life play out on stage - Hell as memory. Rojas has some imaginative ideas- a Pontius Pilate-like interrogation by his captor, and a conversation between Lorca and a ghost of himself, as an old man, who had escaped capture, and lived on. Edith Grossman's translation is seamless, but for some reason I couldn't connect. The Flamethrowers - Rachel Kushner Kushner rambles about in time and space - motorcycle racing on the Bonneville salt flats, Red Brigade terrorism, exploitation of workers in the Brazilian rain forest, the NYC art world of the 70s. She did some impressive research but I felt she grafted a story around it, rather than researched her story. It doesn't help that her main character, a little girl lost in the treachery of life, isn't very interesting and becomes a virtual onlooker in the last third, a real slog to read. I did enjoy the art scene stuff, it struck me as authentic, I wish Kushner had stuck with that. A Visit From the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan Unique in its construction - a minor character in one chapter becomes a major character in the next chapter, and on and on. Egan uses a non-linear approach so we might see this new major character in past or future time. It's not as confusing as I'm making it sound, and it satisfyingly leads to a final chapter that has circled back to the first. So many sad stories of quirky characters doing tragic things, an overload of despair at times. The final two chapters (one written as a power point presentation) suddenly turn warm and cuddly, slightly hopeful. I chuckled at Egan's notion here of the Next Generation - no tats, no piercings, no cussin even, in thrall to texting and the GCD (Global Capitalist Dream). From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia - Pankaj Mishra I found this brilliant. Mishra lays out his argument so persuasively with compelling portraits of important thinkers most of whom were new to me. His theme is the ruinous effect of colonialism, and the general onslaught of Western modernity on the majority of the world's population. The star character for me was Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, a Persian intellectual of the late 1800's haunted by the demoralizing of the conquered, asking the questions "why are they (the West) so strong and why are we so weak?" and "what is to be done and how do we do it?"- to re-order ancient civilizations to compete in the modern world. Questions that linger even more powerfully today.