Keep track of every book I read this year. Write something about each one.

Bittersweet tale of a bookstore rat (Firmin) who devours the literature around him; first literally (chewing on book pages) and then by learning how to read. This makes him close to humans, and he identifies with them more than with his own species. Firmin learns about human nature, too, and soon finds out things are not quite as they seem sometimes with people.

Firmin is adopted as a pet by a lonely, struggling writer. Their micro world changes until it is destroyed by a urban demolition and renovation project in the 1960’s Boston Scollay Square.

Funny, touching story about literature, its presence in our lives, and the illusions and delusions it causes.

No matter how well acquainted one is with accounts of torture in some Latin American regimes of the late 70s and early 80s, this book is still shocking and difficult. However, as someone who is deeply interested in topics like the manipulation of words, symbols and meanings, the experience of narrating the unspeakable, and the construction (and destruction) of a nation’s collective memory, Feilowitz’s work captured my attention from the first to the last page. It was fascinating to read not only a philosophical or theoretical analysis on these issues, but work based on interviews to survivors, perpetrators, family members of the “disappeared,” and seemingly innocent citizens whose participation was more in their omission and silence than in their actions. Feilowitz has not only captured the atrocities of political military repression, but also the subtleties that run deep in a country’s memory in the aftermath of those events.

Intensely introspective, the novel narrates one day in the life of Henry Perowne, a neurosurgeon. As the day breaks, he witnesses an airplane accident from his window. This incident leaves him shaken, but is only the backdrop to a seemingly irrelevant incident later on (a traffic altercation with a thug), which will have a pivotal effect on Perowne’s day and life. Suspenseful, ominous, with action that is slow-rising but ultimately draws momentum for a climax in which art and science are confronted in order to save Perowne and his family at a critical moment. (Anything else will give the plot away!)

This was one great read. I love stories which can build a character deeply and narrate events taking place in a matter of hours, without ever dragging nor hurrying along. The pace was perfect.

Just to keep track, although I don’t have time to write much on each of these titles just now:

• The Help, by Kathryn Stockett
• The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, by Kim Edwards
• The Pilot’s Wife, by Anita Shreve
• Trans-sister Radio, by Chris Bohjalian
• White Oleander, by Janet Fitch
• She’s Come Undone, by Wally Lamb
• No one belongs here more than you, by Miranda July
• Five Years of my Life: An Innocent Man in Guantanamo, by Murat Kurnaz

Best: Miranda July far outweighs the rest of the fiction books here (Kurnaz is autobiographical).

Good: The Help, White Oleander, The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, and She’s Come Undone.

Worst: I didn’t like Trans-sister Radio at all. Being somewhat educated on gender studies, I felt the author did not do justice to the complexity of his topic. On a literary note, the four different perspectives in the book sounded all the same. Oh! And the ending is one of the most far-fetched and unbelievable things ever written.

Anyway, with so much better stuff out there to read, I think my brain muscles need some pumping now (Ayn Rand is doing nicely here!)

One of the titles I (regrettably) grabbed a hold of this summer:

Nicholas Sparks. Nights in Rodanthe

I was watering plants for a friend who was on vacation 
for a month, so I picked this off her bookshelf. 
Although I liked "The Notebook" many years ago, now I 
see that this is formulaic writing; a sappy and
predictable love story, where no real connection is 
established between the two main characters (a middle-
aged workaholic doctor and middle-aged divorced woman)  
other than a couple of nights of sex, wine and 
conversation. I didn't feel how it got from there to 
love. Far-fetched, unbelievable, simplistic, not worth it.

The first novel I red by Philip Roth, given to me last Christmas by my brother. Set in the 1950’s, with the Korean War hovering over the novel almost like a character, the story is narrated by a dead Marcus Messner, who escapes his overprotective father (a kosher butcher) in Newark and enrolls in an Ohio college, a place where Christianity and conservatism collide with the narrator’s testing of his own limitations, prejudices, and sexual desires.

The ending was rather abrupt, but the picture Roth paints of life and society in the American 50’s is brilliant.

It also made me think – hard – about how sometimes seemingly insignificant decisions will influence a turn of events with monumental, irreversible consequences.

Really enjoyed this book and the way Roth conveys so much in a story that is gripping and written with such an astounding economy.

I am well behind with this goal, so I will try to catch up as the mood strikes! I finished reading Middlesex back in February. It was one of those books that I didn’t want to end. It’s funny, sad, touching, beautiful. For some time after I finished it, I missed Cal/Callie (the intersex protagonist and narrator) telling me the amazing Stephanides family saga, spanning three generations, from Greece to Detroit in the late 60’s. It’s so much more than a novel about intersexuality, so much more than a family saga, than cultural shock and adaptation; so much more than a look at the United States of the 60’s.

Definitely one of the more memorable novels I’ve read in a long time.

One of my favorite passages from the novel is quoted below:

“I was thinking how amazing it was that the world contained so many lives. Out in these streets, people were embroiled in a thousand matters, money problems, love problems, school problems. People were falling in love, getting married, going to drug rehab, learning how to ice-skate, getting bifocals, studying for exams, trying on clothes, getting their hair cut, and getting born. And in some houses people were getting old and sick and were dying, leaving others to grieve. It was happening all the time, unnoticed, and it was the thing that really mattered. What really mattered in life, what gave it weight, was death.”

Winner of the National Book Award, I was looking forward to reading this. Sadly, it proved disappointing. I kept waiting to feel any sympathy for the main characters. Lin, an Army officer who has waited for 18 years to divorce his wife Shuyu and marry his girlfriend nurse Manna.

Critics had called this a love story; I wonder why. Lin admits to never have been in love, neither to his first wife Shuyu (an arranged marriage), nor to Manna, whom he simply seems to have ended up with because of inertia.

It was difficult to care about the characters so devoid of any passion. Lin is passive, timid, and indecisive: the reader gets MANY examples of this throughout the book. It never becomes clear why Manna loves Lin, and both of them are finally disappointed after getting what they thought they wanted (each other). This could have been a poignant story line, had the character development been deeper.

The redeeming factor of this novel was the depiction of communist China, and especially the descriptions of the small Chinese rural village where Shuyu lives. The glimpse into this are what makes this novel worthwhile.

Overall an easy, mildly disappointing read.

1. Junot Diaz. The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. (First book I read in 2008. Received it as a Christmas gift from my brother and read it all during the flight over the Atlantic from Texas to Barcelona).

2. Madeleine Bourdouxhe. La mujer de Gilles.

3. Flavia Company. Dame placer.

4. José Saramago. La caverna.

5. Primo Levi. The Drowned and the Saved. (Primo Levi can write about his experience with Holocaust atrocities in a way that is beautiful, philosophical. He turns his own personal experience into something vast, reaching out to all humanity, and reflecting upon both the precious and the terrible things that make us all human).

6. Jorge Semprún. El largo viaje.

7. Jorge Semprún. La escritura o la vida.

8. Jamaica Kincaid. The Autobiography of my Mother.

9. Imre Kertész. Sin destino. (One of the most disturbing and beautiful books I’ve read. Its ending has been in my mind ever since.)

10. Khaled Hosseini. A Thousand Splendid Suns.

11. Carmen Laforet. Nada.

12. Mario Benedetti. La sirena viuda. (Love this man’s work!)

13. Santiago Roncagliolo. Pudor.

14. Primo Levi. Si esto es un hombre.

15. Lidia Curti. Female Stories, Female Bodies.

16. Jamaica Kincaid. Annie John.

17. Jamaica Kincaid. Lucy.

18. Mariano Azuela. Los de abajo.

19. José Saramago. La balsa de piedra.

20. Nizar Sassi. Guantánamo, prisionero 325.

21. Juan Rulfo. Pedro Páramo y El llano en llamas. (I love to be immersed in the magical world and the Mexican landscapes of Pedro Páramo).

22. Dave Eggers. What is the what? (Inspiring and uplifting)

23. Gioconda Belli. La mujer habitada.

24. Imre Kertész. Un instante de silencio en el paredón.

25. Paul Steinberg. Crónicas del mundo oscuro.

26. Jean Amery. Más allá de la culpa y la expiación.

27. Claude Lanzmann. Shoah (screenplay).

28. Horacio Quiroga. Cuentos.

29. Juan José Millás. No mires debajo de la cama.

30. Ignacio Martínez de Pisón. Dientes de leche.

I finished this book in one sitting. It’s a series of short stories, all connected by a general theme: How do people act when they’ve come to a crossroads in life? How does a moment shape an entire life from then on? It shows characters at their most vulnerable; their naked, bare, essential selves.

I met the author more than a year ago, at a conference in the Ateneu Barcelonés. That conference introduced me to this amazing Catalan-Argentinian writer, her work, and the magical 19th century library where I spend a good part of my days now. But that’s another story.
Back to the book, now.

My favorite story is the second one in the book. Titled “Una vida en común” (A Life in Common), this story tells an episode in an old lesbian couple’s life. One of them has always been in charge of doing the shopping, trying to make ends meet on only one meager pension. Yoghurt is always on the list, since it’s her lover’s favorite. One time, Miriam realizes that the yoghurt Rita brings home is past its expiration date. There are open packs of salami, old fruit, and just things that are almost ready to be thrown away in the grocery bag. Miriam thinks that they’re taking advantage of Rita’s old age at the neighborhood grocery store, so she decides to go herself and sort things out, without telling Rita anything.

When she gets to the grocery store, the cashier tells Miriam that they had been wondering what ever had happened to the “two old sisters” that used to go shopping there all the time. Puzzled, Miriam doesn’t know where Rita is getting the scrapes of food to take home. She decides that the best way to find out is to follow her. So one day she does exactly that, and learns that Rita takes grocery bags from the local store, all of which she has hidden at the bottom of a kitchen drawer. She then goes around the neighborhood where local businesses and neighbors give her whatever they can spare—many times food they are just about to get rid of.

Miriam now knows how her love is able to work miracles with their humble pension, and how she can even afford to always bring her the yoghurt she loves. Rita never reveals to Miriam what she has just learned.

This story spoke to my soul. To me, it tells that as months turn into years, sometimes love is expressed by what we say just as much as by what we decide to keep to ourselves forever.

And here is one of my chosen quotes from the book:

“No es bueno pensar qué otras vidas habrían podido vivirse, se angustia una en vano. Lo interesante sería plantearse qué otras vidas podrían vivirse a partir de ahora.” ~Flavia Company

(It isn’t good to think what other lives we could have lived; one gets mortified in vain. The interesting thing would be to consider what other lives could be lived starting now.)