The good reads - well. How stupid can I be thinking that I will cover my good reads in one blog post? It's not possible of course, as I've spent fifty-three years reading, but I'm going to concentrate on some of the best ones I read these last one and a half years.
First - back to yesterday's blog post about badly written bestsellers. There's one trilogy that I didn't include there - and it's been the hugest hit ever these past two years AND many critics would say, BAD BAD BAD - in every sense of the word. "Fifty Shades of Grey" by E.L. James. Well, here it is - I didn't think it was all that bad actually. You have to take the trilogy for what it is - novels about sex, power and wealth - no more, no less. It's a sort of fairytale really. And E.L. James doesn't pretend it to be anything else either. Having said that, I found all the explicit sex descriptions terribly boring and not once a turn-on, and after a few hundred pages of them I was thinking Oh no! Not again. Yawn. But I do think some of her other writing is okay, the ordinary love scenes between the two protagonists, the dark sides of Christian Grey. Not great literature, but there was obviously a slot in the world now for this kind of story. For once I can somehow understand the bestselling code.
Julian Barnes won the Man Booker Prize 2011 for "The Sense of an Ending." It's very short, almost a novella. I just couldn't put it down and read it right through, then I gave away as gifts three copies of it, including my own, never doubting that the recipients would be just as delighted as I was. I don't know if they were - I would like them to volunteer that information to me - I don't want to ask. The story is intriguing, fascinating and on the surface a bit ordinary, but oh wow - does it ever build up. A fantastic plot for those who - like me - have lived a lifetime and harbour a huge number of memories in that hard disc we call the brain. But can memories be accurate? Hmmm... Read the book and find out.
Another British novel - "Swimming Home" by Deborah Levy. Set in France, it's like a chamber piece revolving around a group of holiday makers. I love this type of plot! This kind of subject! The loaded conversations, the interactions, the unexpected turns, the eeriness. And the title suits me fine!
My sister-in-law recommended Jonathan Franzen to me, and "Freedom" was my first encounter with this brilliant American writer. A novel so heavy and emotional in parts that I simply had to have a break from it once in a while. Just to catch my breath. This dysfunctional suburban family is painfully easy to identify with. So threatening, so scary, so you-and-me-and-our-kids. And Jonathan Franzen - your language, your sentences, your symbolism, your images. I'm a fan!
Summer morning happiness on the terrace with Gillian Flynn and homemade Latte
Another American writer - Gillian Flynn, who has written crime novels for years, reached out to a huge public with this novel - "Gone Girl." I read it this summer on holiday in Bulgaria, another "non-putdownable." I shared the above photo on Instagram and Facebook, and my friend Tove replied: "We're reading the same book and it's not the first time." Tove is the one who taught me to bring along your finished books as gifts when you're invited to people's houses - that way they can either read them, regift them or throw them away. Good thinking!
Well, Gillian Flynn - not too sure about your novel - crazy and hateful as it is - but I liked it well enough to regift it to my Irish friends in Bulgaria.
Talking of Bulgaria - our friend Turi joined us on a trip there in May, and she really made an effort afterwards to find us a book where Bulgaria is the subject - as a thank you gift - "Solo" by Rana Dasgupta. Sometimes there are completely unheard-of authors in store for you! I love this kind of surprise! Oh, what a fabulous writer this young Indian-British guy is. If you have any interest whatsoever in the difficult process and development the Eastern European countries are undergoing - or if you haven't! - this novel is inevitable. Bulgarian and Georgian history in a short version. The story of the old man Ulrich in a longer version. Reality and daydreaming woven into each other.
"The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry" by Rachel Joyce. British again. Oh yes. Very English. Sweet, soothing, enlightening, frightening, upsetting. A journey - literally. A physical journey, an emotional one, a devastating one. Simple and sweet on the surface, dark and troubling underneath. I love the simple, almost naivistic language! I gave this to my friend Tove after I'd read it (good teacher!) - and appropriately enough she read it while spending time in Surrey, England. She loved it!
Just starting "This is How It Ends" now - by Irish writer Kathleen MacMahon. Very excited and can't wait to get into it, but I have to finish another novel first. She's received great reviews too. A bestseller? I'll get back to you with my own reviews - that's a promise.
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