A Hundred And Other Such Pleasures
I've gotten well into the groove of the New Year quite nicely, and even survived Friday the Thirteenth with nary a scratch, except for that one unsettling moment when I happened to witness the furry silhouette of a black cat, embossed on the pavement road just outside of our community gate, on my way to the market that morning. Was it just unfortunate roadkill and cliche? A totem and deliberate sacrifice to bail us residents out of terrible plagues and horrors that might have befallen us on that day? Who knows.
And true to my New Year's List, I've gotten into some serious reading and on to a third title now, Milan Kunderas' "The Unbearable Lightness of Being". I picked this out of my daughter's bookshelf, and right now am too early into the book to judge if this ( a narrative peppered with the author's philosophical insights quite eloquently expressed, but the story unravels a tad bit flat, to my mind ) will prove to be a memorable read, or otherwise.
"The Da Vinci Code" was a quickie, took all of one afternoon and the better part of a morning to read, because such is the nature of the book. The author wrote in a manner that you tend to get ahead of the story and guess rightly, because he gives a lot of dead giveaways, not to mention all that hype surrounding this novel, so all you want to do is get to the end of it. I wouldn't say wham-bam-thank-you-maam exactly because it achieves its purpose to entertain, and I intend to watch the movie anyway. Also, you will forgive the inaccuracy of certain details even if presented as a story within a real environment because it is safely classified as fiction, so you treat it as such.
"100 Years Of Solitude" ( surely the precursor to Isabel Allende's "House Of The Spirits"? ), ahh, there, now, is A Novel. I do not know why I let pass a long time before I read another one of Garcia Marquez's spellbinding work after having read "Love In The Time Of Cholera", this strange, beautiful, humorous and thoroughly fabulous love story, because it seems like transgression. Reading it left me in wonderment and exhaustion, from all that sensory overload, with the multi-layered texture of the story that makes so tangible the sights, the smells, the magic and the colors that Gabriel Garcia Marquez is able to paint into the wide canvas of his pages. This book is truly unforgettable and a great, great way to tick one off the list.
Filed Under: Books
And true to my New Year's List, I've gotten into some serious reading and on to a third title now, Milan Kunderas' "The Unbearable Lightness of Being". I picked this out of my daughter's bookshelf, and right now am too early into the book to judge if this ( a narrative peppered with the author's philosophical insights quite eloquently expressed, but the story unravels a tad bit flat, to my mind ) will prove to be a memorable read, or otherwise.
"The Da Vinci Code" was a quickie, took all of one afternoon and the better part of a morning to read, because such is the nature of the book. The author wrote in a manner that you tend to get ahead of the story and guess rightly, because he gives a lot of dead giveaways, not to mention all that hype surrounding this novel, so all you want to do is get to the end of it. I wouldn't say wham-bam-thank-you-maam exactly because it achieves its purpose to entertain, and I intend to watch the movie anyway. Also, you will forgive the inaccuracy of certain details even if presented as a story within a real environment because it is safely classified as fiction, so you treat it as such.
"100 Years Of Solitude" ( surely the precursor to Isabel Allende's "House Of The Spirits"? ), ahh, there, now, is A Novel. I do not know why I let pass a long time before I read another one of Garcia Marquez's spellbinding work after having read "Love In The Time Of Cholera", this strange, beautiful, humorous and thoroughly fabulous love story, because it seems like transgression. Reading it left me in wonderment and exhaustion, from all that sensory overload, with the multi-layered texture of the story that makes so tangible the sights, the smells, the magic and the colors that Gabriel Garcia Marquez is able to paint into the wide canvas of his pages. This book is truly unforgettable and a great, great way to tick one off the list.
Filed Under: Books
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