I meant to post this earlier, but complications like being in the hospital got in the way of things…talk about summer breaks!
The hot blazing sun leaves one with a hankering to go to the beach, show off one’s Havaianas, and drink the coldest drinks with little umbrellas. Ah, summer. So clichéd and yet still so fun.
My reading list for this summer has some sort of a theme going, although at first I didn’t . It is about writers writing about well, writing. Or writers writing about other writers. Or about reading. Of course other genres make an appearance, so as it lend my reading list this summer the sort of eclecticism I always like.
- Believer’s Book of Writers Talking to Writers -What more fun could there be when writers talk to other writers about their craft.Sublime!Here’s a quote from Ian McEwan on novels:
“With the novel, we have happened to devise this form, this very elastic, mutable form that can allow us moments of real human investigation…It’s an open-ended way of looking at our own image in ways that science can’t do, religion’s not credible, meta
physics is too intellectually repellent on its surface – this is our best machine as it were.”
2. Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Living to Tell the Tale – the long-awaited first installment of his autobiography, Marquez recalls his early childhood and indeed tells a tale where magical things occur. Beautiful.
3. Nobel Lectures: From the Literature Laureates,1986-2006.
Here’s the blurb from amazon.com: Since the first Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded in 1901, controversy has surrounded the prize, the laureates and their Nobel lectures, often relating to political engagement or lack thereof. Covering the past 20 years, this collection gathers the remarks of writers as diverse as Orhan Pamuk, J.M. Coetzee, Seamus Heaney, Toni Morrison and Naguib Mahfouz. Pamuk speaks of writing as a solitary venture: writers must feel compelled to shut ourselves up in a room... so that we can create a deep world in our writing. Harold Pinter uses his moment in the Nobel sun to issue a strident attack on the U.S.-British invasion of
Iraq. For Gao Xingjian, the writer's task involves the search for truth: To subvert is not the aim of literature; its value lies in discovering and revealing... truth of the human world.... And Joseph Brodsky concludes that a human being is an aesthetic creature before he is an ethical one. While the lectures provide inspiring glimpses of the nature of literature and the aim of the writing life, the collection lacks a strong introduction to explore these disparate views or to explain the rationale for a collection of speeches that are readily available elsewhere.
(Oct.)
5. Carson McCuller’s The Heart is a Lonely Hunter – McCuller’s debut novel, this is considered a classic tale of the coming of age of a girl in the deep South.
Very sharp images. Very vivid metaphors.
6. Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory – Greene’s most famous work, this is about the Catholic persecution in
Mexico and its unlikely hero, the unnamed whiskey priest. I fell in
love with Greene's meditative and ultimately shocking rendering of the human experience.
7. Frederick Buechner’s Brendan – the tale of a medieval saint, Buechner writes with quiet beauty that is both insightful and challenging.
Here’s what the blurb from Barnes and Nobles says about the novel: An artistic triumph to rival the award-winning Godric and Buechner's other outstanding works, this novel about St. Brendan the Navigator reads like inspired biography. Finn, Brendan's friend, recounts events from the saint's birth in 484 until his death at age 94. The chronicle convincingly recreates Ireland of the times and, even more impressively, the many people involved with Brendan: Bishop Erc, ``weaned from druidry by the sainted Patrick,'' at the sound of whose name ``the angels wet their holy breeches,'' and Maeve, the warrior woman whose spit cracks a stone in half, are just two of the company Finn brings to vigorous life. From Brendan himself, the reader learns about the wonders and disappointments of his fabulous sea voyages in search of Tir-na-n-Og, ``Promised Land of Saints.'' Ribald humor, piercing sorrows and miraculous moments join seamlessly in Buechner's latest literary feat.
8. Frederick Buechner’s Storm – Buechner’s retelling of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Blurb at Barnes and Noble declares that this novel is“Infused with humanity, and informed by faith.
The Storm is Frederick Buechner's most captivating novel since
Godric--a richly satisfying contemporary story of fragmented families and love's many mysteries that will move you, makeyou laugh, and fill you with wonder.”
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