this week i read:
Haruku Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
Dorothy Dunnett, The Game of Kings
Amy Chua, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother
Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose
so. lessee. I think I actually _hated_ the Murakami, which is weird because a) he's all famous and shit, so you think I would find something to like and b) he does two things that I also like to do (run and write), so ditto you would think i'd find something to like in his book which is about running and writing. but no, alas. I found it affected, pointless, and humorless. eek. I said it. Sample annoying quote:
"But is it ever possible for a professional writer to be liked by people? [Clearly you want the answer to be no, even though there are reams of famous writers who have friends, and in fact you yourself mention friends in your book]. I have no idea. [OK, so why pose the question in the first place?] Maybe somewhere in the world it is. [Huh? Likeability is geographically determined?]... But that's another story. Let's get back to running. I've gotten back into a running lifestyle again. [Duh. You're writing a book about how you like to run.] I started seriously running and now rigorously running. [Again, huh?] What this might mean for me, now that I'm in my late fifties, I don't know yet. [So... you don't know the meaning of the previous pointless statement... funny, neither do I.] But I think it's got to mean something. Maybe not anything profound, but there must be significance to it. Anyway, right now I'm running hard. I'll wait till later to think about what it all means. [So basically what you're saying is that you are trying to make your editor's word count with an ENTIRELY MEANINGLESS PARAGRAPH IN WHICH YOU DON'T ACTUALLY IMPART ANY ACTUAL IDEAS.] Grrr. Anyway. He continues in this vein for the entire book. 'nuf said. can't recommend it. Perversely, it did make me want to read one of his novels to see if I can figure out why he is Mr. Famous Literary Best-Seller.
I'm going to lump the Dorothy Dunnett and the Umberto Eco together, mostly because really I'm only a few chapters into The Name of the Rose (which is a re-read - I read it when I was seventeen, and remembered it being very dense and difficult and brainy, but sort of sexy at the same time, so wanted to confirm my impression). The thing that I luuuuurve about both authors is that, while they are essentially writing beach books (mystery/thriller historical fiction) they are completely unapologetic about throwing in snippets of old French/German/Spanish/Latin without any translation or footnotes or even sly context-entwined explanation as if duh, any reader worth his salt should be able to sail right through it no problem (I will admit to resorting to the Internet a couple of times, but appreciate the challenge). They both have big fat juicy vocabularies, too: I don't have the Dunnett on me to be able to look at, but a random description of a carved stone column from the Eco contains the following list: sirens, hippocentaurs, gorgons, harpies, incubi, dragopods, minotaurs, lynxes, pards, chimeras, cynophales who darted fire from their nostrils, crocodiles, polycaudate, hairy serpents... leucrota, manticores, paranders, weasels, dragons, hoopoes, owls, basilisks, hypnales, presters, spectafici, scorpions, saurians, whales, scitales, amphisbenae, iaculi, dispsases, green lizards, pilot fish, octopi, morays, and sea turtles. Got that? I got maybe half of them.
The Amy Chua book I feel like I don't really need to discuss because EVERYBODY is discussing it right now, to the point where you don't need to have read the book to have an opinion about it. Briefly: I agree with her general philosophy that children's (indeed, anyone's) self-esteem comes from acquiring actual skills, which requires spending actual time and effort, and that it's up to the parents to get that to happen, but I think the extremes to which she carries that philosophy in practice are kind of psycho.
Anyway. Time to go implement some parenting philosophy of my own: sleep when you can, eat when you can, and try to have a shower every day. So far, two out of three...
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