Dragos says this is the time to write - when the sun hits you straight in the head, and there’s 35 C in the shade and you can’t breathe. And while I think the picture he paints is entirely different from mine and looks like a great deal of fun, I have to say it doesn’t work that way. At least not for me. The sun kinda freezes my brain (or, more appropriately, melts it) and renders me totally and completely unable to put 2 coherent sentences together. Or to think them. Once I graduated from highschool summer kinda lost its appeal to me, to the point where now I’m desperately looking forward to September, when I’ll be back to my normal and less uncomfortable self. Damn summer!

And since the sun stubbornly chooses to illuminate every tiny formerly dark corner, I figured it was about time for this book. (Well, in fact, i just picked it off the shelf, there was no decision process, but I tried -and failed- to connect the ranting and the book. Do I still get points for trying? )

There’s been heated (again, with the summer vocabulary!) debates about 6 years ago when the book first came out about whether Mr. Foer is a genius (as a blurb on the back cover will be happy to inform you, The TImes said: “A work of genius. A new kind of novel…after it things will never be the same again.”) or a fraud (Harry Siegel of the NY Press called him “a fraud and a hack”). And even though I don’t think I’d recognize genius if it poked me in the eye with a sharp sharp stick, I still don’t think he’s a genius. Or a fraud, for that matter. What I think is that Mr. Foer is a very ingenious, very clever writer. Sometimes, a bit too clever maybe, because, while he goes through a very generous range of post modernist tricks and gimmicks, you can sometimes lose sight of the story.

Basically, we have here a road trip novel that approaches still difficult and painful subjects with humour (not the inappropriate kind) and that does what “A clockwork orange” did before - reinvent, or put a new spin on English. In the New York Times review they picked up some of the best of Alex’s phrases: “In his idiosyncratic and persuasively consistent lingo, to sleep is to ”manufacture Z’s,” to have sex is ”be carnal,” good is ”premium,” nearby is ”proximal,” difficult is ”rigid,” and a certain downtown Manhattan neighborhood is, logically, ”Greenwich Shtetl.”” Funny stuff, no matter how grave the subjects of his writings are, you can’t help but smile, or even laugh out loud (for the first 50 pages at least, until you get used to it). Alex’s letters remind me of that episode of Friends, where Joey has to write a letter of recommendation for Monica and Chandler’s file at the adoption agency. He tries to make it look really smart, so he uses a thesaurus and ends up saying things like “they are humid prepossessing Homo Sapiens with full sized aortic pumps” when he meant to say “they are warm, nice, people with big hearts“.

Moving on from my Friends obsession, I guess I should say that the book is basically built from 3 threads: Alex writes about their journey in search of Augustine, Jonathan writes the history of the shetl Trachimbrod, from which his family originates - and the 2 stories are combined through Alex’s letters to Jonathan. But what journey, you might ask? The journey, the wheel that puts this book in motion, is Jonathan Safran Foer’s (the author and main character) desire to find Augustine, a woman who presumably saved his grandfather from the Nazis, while he was still living in Ukraine. He hires the Heritage Tours agency, a family owned business who uses the grandfather as a driver (and his “seeing eye bitch” as a mascot) and Alex, the eldest son as a guide and translator (when he speaks a very mangled English).

What I loved the most was the story of Trachimbrod - its rise and up until its complete disappearance off the face of the earth, with its eerie locals divided in Slouchers and Uprighters and its even stranger folklore, a story that spreads over 200 years and encompasses small family tragedies (as they can be read in The Book of Recurrent Dreams or in  The Book of Antecedents) as well as major historical moments.

The more I try to write about it, the more I realise that it’s very easy to get lost in the details with this book. It’s catchy, it borders the absurd sometimes, it’s tragic yet funny and I expect it’s better than the movie version (which I plan to see one of these days and which, I now see, has actually cut out my favorite part. I guess it wasn’t all that cinematographic…Oh, and in the movie, Alex looks a lot like a gangster wannabe - also disappointing, since that’s not at all how I pictured him. )

Oh, and check out the website too: http://www.whoisaugustine.com/. It’s definitely one integrated novel - it’s got it all

In timp ce lasam un mic comentariu la Terorista mi s-a facut dor sa scriu. Dar nu prea am ce. N’am terminat nici o carte - working on Everything is Illuminated, si nu ca nu mi-ar placea, dar e vara, si e cald, si nu am nici un chef sa citesc. Plus ca am descoperit recent Heroes - un fel de X Men reinterpreted si mi-am petrecut weekendul uitandu-ma la Milo Ventimiglia in diverse ipostaze: Peter Petrelli vs Jess Mariano. Gilmore Girls is seriously addictive. Imi plac fast talking characters - fie ca’s in Gilmore sau in West Wing - pentru ca nu seamana deloc cu mine

Si am inceput sa ma plimb prin Google Maps: blocul 8 (cred, inca nu sunt 100% sigura care e), New York, Portland, Dublin, Londra, Rejkavik. Vara nu vreau decat sa plec..

“People take on the shapes of the songs and the stories that surround them, especially if they don’t have their own song”

I’ll keep this short and simple. Remember how happy I was when I read American Gods? Well, from that happiness a sort of fear of disappointment derived - I was afraid I might not like this…spin-off tale quite as much. But, boy was I wrong! (And in such cases, it’s always good to be wrong ) The story is hilarious and the characters are so easy to relate to. After all, let’s face it, unless it’s a Gilmore-perfect universe, we’ve all been embarrassed by our parents. And we’ve also done stuff just because our parents didn’t agree. And haven’t we all taken a trip to the beginning of the Universe just to get rid of a very annoying sibling? Well, maybe not that, but for the rest, it sure works. The perfect summer reading.

Spider and Charlie make up the always funny & charming duo of two opposed characters who end up to be the best of friends (or brothers, in this case). Very Lethal Weapon. Very 48hrs. Very good. Their surprising encounter digs up a long and odd family history, as their father is none other than the African spider-god Anansi (Mr. Nancy - as he is known in American Gods), the original trickster and the one who currently owns all the stories and songs (which he’s stolen from Tiger, a god with many years’ worth of a grudge). It’s very fitting that a spider god should be in charge of stories, but Tiger is not really into the folksy sayings that combine the words “web” and “story” very closely. And Charlie and Spider are as different as they come - the accountant and the freelancer (for lack of a better word, after all, Spider has inherited his father’s many abilities and he hasn’t done a day’s work), but in store for them is the death of their father, a shared fiancee, a magical meeting with the Bird Woman and Charlie’s maniacal, murderous boss. Of course they turn out on the other side of it all transformed - you can spot it a mile away, but in the meantime, it’s all about the journey and you will laugh, you will cry (not really, it’s just a  figure of speech), you will be disgusted to the point of throwing up (especially if your tolerance of spiders circles around 0) .

Confused? Wikipedia has the plot nicely told, so you can check it out there. But it’s better to read the book, because you’re in for a real adventure

This is the second book by Mr. Saramago I read and the second I loved. It’s all in the style - I’ll be listing him among my all time favorites from now on. Despite the cursive text, the seeming lack of dialogue, punctuation or caps it’s extremely gripping. One of those books you just can’t put down. His phrasing has a certain rhythm, more than just reading it, you feel it within you. I’m probably rambling by this time, but that’s just to show how great he is. Besides, I think I’ve said similar stuff when I read Blindness.

I’ve also noticed a bunch of similarities between those two books (maybe there’s the same thing going with all his books, but I wouldn’t know…yet ), not just in style, which is Mr. Saramago’s trademark, but in choice of subject. He picks a completely extraordinary event, and treats its consequences to the most ordinary and mundane details. In this case, a very “Death takes a holiday/Meet Joe Black” event: death really takes a holiday. For 7 months nobody in the unnamed country dies. People grow older and older, sicker and sicker - yet no one dies. Those consequences I was talking about earlier are, many of them, bureaucratic in essence: a looming bankruptcy for the funeral industry, a short period of chaos in the insurance business (but insurance companies always fall on their feet ), the overpopulation of hospitals and nursing homes…all the logical things that you wouldn’t expect to follow such a out-of-the-ordinary event. But that’s the charm of it, is it not? Besides, Mr. Saramago has a particular brand of humor when describing such chaos - he looks upon all these predicaments with a sort of half-detached irony that completes a picture of the absurd.

As the euphoria of being seemingly immortal quickly washes off, one of the many old, tired and sick finds a way to “trick” death: this unusual suspension of activity happends only within the borders of one country - to die, you just have to cross the border. This practice becomes increasingly popular, spawning a “maphia” (the ph is a distinctive sign) that will rapidly gain power and start even more bureaucratic negotiations with the Government.

Then, just as things were starting to work, death returns - with a bang, or, in this case, a violet letter published in all papers nationwide. Death writes and, while graphologists and all sort of CSI-type specialists start analyzing, reconstructing and finally searching for her (it’s definitely a she), she follows a new set of rules: from now on, everyone will get a violet letter a week before their actual death, so that they can put their business in order. Why screw with a system that’s been working just fine for thousands of years - death has no particular reason, except perhaps for a new routine. After all, it gets to be a dull job eventually. At this point death takes centerstage and, for about half the book, gradually becomes humanised. And, how fitting, the first step towards this transformation is through frustration and disappointment…

Another thing that struck me (or the animal lover in me) is that Mr. Saramago must really love dogs. In Blindness there’s the “dog of tears”, here is the cellist’s dog. An unnamed creature, but a very loving and kind one. I’d go so far as to say that these truly are memorable companions

You can view it as a simple work of fiction, as a satire of today’s society, as a fable, as an alarm bell driving us to controversial questions about religion or euthanasia, but either way, I would deem this to be a must-read. Maybe this book, and surely this author. And if I were to grade it (which I usually don’t do, but I’m in a grading mood right now), I’d give it a 9.5/10 (points, stars, pens or a furry animal of choice), my only issue being that it does get a bit too Meet Joe Black-ish by the end…

Sept 23rd, Budapest, in that little orange section

I’ve never done the E-ticket thing, but I sure hope everything’s gonna be fine I’m going to see Coldplay…yaaaai!

“Of the vindictiveness of princes, there is no end“

How very Sheherezada-like of you, Mr. Rushdie! The Enchantress…charters territories thus (i was gonna say uncharted ) unknown in the literary world of Mr. Rushdie, and it does so with grace, elegance, beauty, intricacy…and very little magic. Set in a time where magic should be more alive than it is now (that’s the Ottoman Empire, India, a bit of Persia and Florence in the Middle Ages - around 1500) the book fails to capture the same feel and yes, the same magic, found in his previous work. That is not to say Mr. Rushdie had lost his touch - not at all - it just seems a bit misguided, this novel. A lot of research has been done, a lot of effort and sweat was put into it - and I think it was to compensate for, perhaps, a temporary lack of inspiration. His phrasing is as heavily wonderful as ever, his universe as exotic, his characters as colorful…and yet…and yet….I miss that spark. It it pains me to say this, but I expected a bit more. That isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy the book, because I did, I enjoyed it a lot - it’s just that my expectations from Mr. Rushdie are perhaps higher than from any other - so that might be my fault there But I don’t want to be unjust - for the last 100 pages or so, I did feel that rush coming over me, and I did start to care more what happens, and all because the spark was back

The “enchantress” in that title is a woman of noble breeding, a Mughal princess, sister of the emperor Babur, great aunt of Akbar the Great (all very real historical figures) that went by the name of Qara Koz (Lady Black Eyes) and who, when taken as spoil of war by a Persian Shah, chooses to exert her magic to the purpose of gaining higher ranks and importance. She is on the side of the victor - when the Persian Shah is defeated and she is given the chance to return home, she chooses to stay with the conqueror, when he, in turn, is vanquished and abandons her on the battlefield, she will meet Argalia the Turk, an Ottoman warrior of Florentine origins - and follow him to his home town. If this seems complicated, well, this is just a story within a story, because the “present time” in the book is the time of Akbar the Great, where a stranger wearing a multicolored coat claims his descending from Qara Koz and thus his relation to the emperor himself. The story of lady Black eyes is told in parallel with the story of the Argalia, the boy orphaned at 10 who left his 2 best friends, following his dream to conquer the world (or at least some part of it). And there’s more, because we learn the life stories of these friends - Niccolo ‘il Macchia’ Macchiavelli and Ago Vespucci (cousin of Amerigo) and we’re taken on a whirlwind tour of the world that ends in the New World - America.

It’s hard choose a narrative thread - there’s so many, and they’re all entwined and tied together, that if you get into one, you will eventually get into all. So the best thing I can do is say “read the book”; despite it not being Mr. Rushdie’s best, it’s still worth checking out, since a world populated with made-up beings who live amongst real ones, a world of coincidences, of imagination, of ghosts and enchantments is always worth checking out, and I really didn’t do it justice.

Added bonus - Vlad the Devil (Vlad Tepes) and his abnormal cruelty is mentioned in a couple of paragraphs: “Against Vlad III, the viovode of Wallachia - Vlad Dracula, the dragon-devil, the Impaler Prince - no ordinary power could have prevailed. It had begun to be said of Prince Vlad that he drank the blood of his impaled victims as they writhed in their death throes, upon their stakes and that drinking the living blood of men and women gave him strange powers over death.” Eh, is this not good?

And that’s that - except the better (and contradictory, might I add ) reviews by NYTimes, The Guardian and the New York Review of Books (hmm, the reviewer for this one is JC Oates) that I figured I should leave you with

Mai multe detalii aici: http://www.terorista.ro/www/2008/06/13/blog-in-pericol/

Io as vrea, dar tocmai am avut o experienta cu un pisoi (nu chiar asa de mic) care a stat la mine in apartament si my roomies nu au mai rezistat dupa 3 spatamani. Si, I must confess, inca mi’e cam dor de el. So, I’m out of the running…dar poate voi vreti sa adoptati intre 1 si 7 pisici mici mici mici 

Others study this book for their SATs, I hadn’t even heard of Chinua Achebe until I was 22. That doesn’t say anything good about me - except that I somehow have an excuse: African literature isn’t really big around here. Which also means that I have no way of placing this in any sort of context and that, while I did find it interesting and informative, I also found it unexpectedly alive and real. Unexpectedly for me, anyways.

Chinua Achebe is, apparently, the father of modern African lit, and Things fall apart is one of the first African novels, written in English, to achieve global acclaim. The author was born in the village Ogidi, as part of the Igbo community in the southern Nigeria - and my reason for mentioning this is that it amazed me. I don’t know why exactly, but I pictured him as an expat, being born somewhere in the UK and returning to Nigeria for inspiration - as an adult. But he was born there, he lived there, most of what’s written in this book could be first hand experience (or stories told by elders) - and all this makes his achievements seem bigger to me, because it certainly took more willpower to get there than it would have taken…others (i.e. Europeans).

The book itself is written very simply and yet very powerfully. The village of Umuofia comes alive so easily and, even if you don’t really understand many of the customs, you’re quickly caught in the story. Okonkwo is a sort of a self made man in his tribe, with an American-type of rags-to-riches rise set in a 100% African decor. The son of a poor and lazy man, he takes the decision to never be like his father, he works more than any other member of his tribe, he accumulates wealth (big yams crops, 3 wives, palm tree wine), titles and the respect of the clan, becoming one of its ruling members. He is powerful and very in control of his emotions - especially of those of love, be they for his family or for Ikemefuna, the boy brought as tribute and destined for sacrifice. Ikemefuna lives as part of Okonkwo’s family for 3 years, until the priests call for his sacrifice, and the man who gives the final blow is Okonkwo himself. His remorse is only brief - until it’s drowned by work and by his all-consuming ambition. A second defining moment for Okonkwo is his daughter’s sickness. Ezinma is, by far, his favorite child, judging by his constant regret that she wasn’t born a man. Perhaps in her clinging to life, in her ambition to live, he seems himself, just like, in his eldest son Nwoye, he sees traits of his much despised father.

What derails Okonkwo’s life is his accidental shooting another clan member, and his subsequent exile to his mother’s village. Though he manages to become an important member of that clan too, after his 7 year punishment is over, he returns to Umuofia, only to find that everything has changed. White men have brought their religion and their priests, they have converted many locals (including his disappointing son Nwoye) and have completely changed the dynamic of the village. When one of the newly converted Christians unmasks one of the clan spirits during a ceremony (thus “killing” it), the church is destroyed and 6 of the clan leaders (including Okonkwo) are imprisoned (and humiliated, beaten) by the District Commissioner. Upon their return, Okonkwo demands war, and even commits a last act of defiance - defiance towards the new white law and towards his clan, who seeks a peaceful resolution, unworthy of their ancestors - and kills himself.

There is a lot in the book about local customs - a lot which could seem barbaric to us, and which definitely seemed barbaric to those who first stepped foot in Africa. But when they are explained, when they are integrated in a community, when you see how they make sense and how they bring people together, you tend to forget their slightly more violent nature - like the legend of the Ogbanje (which actually impressed me most). In the end, Okonkwo’s fall is quick and symbolic for the fall of the entire continent - the old and new law can’t coexist peacefully, and it’s quite clear who will survive and who will fall.

At one point I found myself thinking that it’s a bit of Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto meets that part of American Gods about the 2 slaves from Africa. Which I know is totally moronic of me, but it did cross my mind, there, I confess ;)) Wondering where you can find a better review? Well, there’s Dragos (who wrote just yesterday about the very same book ) and WhiteNoise. Enjoy

Well, the happy bone (thanks Raych ) is doing great now - not sure I owe it entirely to the 8 books I got (and for a very small price, too ), but I think they played a pretty big part. Who said stuff doesn’t make you happy? ;)) Aaaaand….taaaa-daaaaa…the list!

A.S. Byatt - Angels and insects

Ben Okri - In Arcadia

Yukio Mishima - Kinkakuji (The temple of the Golden Pavilion)

Roger Caillois - Ponce Pillat

John Banville - The Sea (Yup, Luciat, it’s all your fault )

Jose Saramago - Ensaio sobre a lucidez (Eseu despre luciditate)

DBC Pierre - Vernon God Little

One more exam on saturday, and then I’m getting serious about them books

Apparently I can’t even think up a new title. I’m all so like ”whatever” these days that not even Gilmore Girls or Friends cheer me up, plus I keep listening to REM’s “Drive” on repeat -and that’s a really bad call I’m making from the start. And I’m reading Chinua Achebe’s ”Things fall apart” - which, to my surprise, I’m enjoying.

I’m gonna try some bookshopping therapy later today; hope it works; I’ll be back with the details