Books

...Atiq Rahimi: 'In Iran just as well as in Afghanistan, in actual fact, words defy tyranny'

Dancer by Colum McCann (Dublin, 1965) was a very intense read, almost painfully so in the opening sections set among Russian soldiers in WWII being evacuated in railroad cars, novel based on the life of the great Russian ballet dancer, Rudolph Nureyev. This is the third novel by McCann which I have read. Prior to this I have read his Let the Great World Go On Spinning dealing largely with post 9/11 attack New York City life and his wonderful book about a post WWII European Roma, Zoli. Normally if one says, "the book was 337 pages long but it felt longer", it is not a complement but somehow in this case it is as there is just so much in this incredible novel. We begin with Nureyev as a very young boy dancing for the people in his home town in Russia. We see the tortuous process that took him into training to be a dancer in Russia. We come to understand his family. We are with him when he defects in Paris and for his great triumphs in New York City, London, and elsewhere. We get to know others in his life as the novels varies both the narrator and narrative modes. In one very powerful section we enter the drug fueled world of rich artistic gay New York as personified by a Venezuelan street hustler raised to the status of superstar by his affiliations. McCann frankly depicts the extreme sexual promiscuity of Nureyev, in one scene he and the Venezuelan stage a contest to see who can perform oral sex on the most men in a row without tiring. Nureyev wins with nine. There are some wonderful characters like his shoe maker, Margot Fonteyn with whom he danced over 500 times, his housekeeper, Andy Warhol makes an appearance as does Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams. We see how Nureyev spends the fortune he makes. in one crazy scene he buys a painting for $50,000.00 and then takes it home in a cab to avoid the $100.00 delivery fee. There are lots of things we never understand about Nureyev. His ego was massive and he never really rose above his Tarter roots. He could be cruelly capricious, and very generous almost simultaneously. Somehow one is deeply drawn to Nureyev, his flaws make him real, his art transcends our normalcy.,Dancer is a great novel. I endorse it to all but the homophobic who I suspect probably do not read a lot of books based on ballet dancers anyway. There is much to be learnt from in this novel. I have his Songdogs and hope to read it and his forthcoming Transatlantic soon. Mel u

So there is a totally awesome chat happening at Figment tonight with YA authors Elizabeth Norris (Unraveling and Unbreakable) and Brodi Ashton (Everneath and Everbound), plus Balzer + Bray editor Kristen Rens. They will be taking questions about life as a published author. How neat is that? Here’s the little blurb from Figment about it:  Living the Dream: Real Talk About Life as a Published Author These days, writers aren’t just writers. They’re also social media mavens, seasoned public speakers, and one-person publicity machines. And they still have to find time to write! What’s life really like for a successful, published author? Join us on Figment on Thursday, May 23 at 7:00 p.m. ET to find out! We’ll be hosting a live chat with authors Elizabeth Norris (Unraveling and Unbreakable) and Brodi Ashton (Everneath and Everbound) — plus special guest Kristin Rens, editor at the HarperCollins imprint, Balzer + Bray. I know I definitely am going to try to make it – it sounds awesome. So maybe I will see you there :) They’ll be taking your questions! Related posts: Reminder: Chat with Nick James TONIGHT Everbound by Brodi Ashton Book Review Cassandra Clare Video Chat!

The Eternity Cure by Julie Kagawa Blood of Eden #2 Publisher: Harlequin Teen Release Date: April 30, 2013 Pages: 416 Source: Publisher Buy the Book: Amazon | B&N | Book Depository Rating: 5 stars Allison Sekemoto has vowed to rescue her creator, Kanin, who is being held hostage and tortured by the psychotic vampire Sarren. The call of blood leads her back to the beginning—New Covington and the Fringe, and a vampire prince who wants her dead yet may become her wary ally. Even as Allie faces shocking revelations and heartbreak like she’s never known, a new strain of the Red Lung virus that decimated humanity is rising to threaten human and vampire alike. The Eternity Cure was a worthy sequel to The Immortal Rules. Enticing and thrilling, there is an everhigher climb to a heightening of stakes throughout the book. Julie Kagawa keeps proving herself as an author and The Eternity Cure is the best work by her yet. The Immortal Rules captivated me with it’s original premise and snarky main character and The Eternity Cure only built on those qualities. Allison remains a fantastic main character who is completely witty. The return of other characters from book 1 was a real treat as well – I won’t say who, as that would spoil, but Julie Kagawa surprised me at every turn. It was like a big fiesta at times. The plot in this one is SO good. It definitely did not go where I was expecting and Julie Kagawa managed to keep me surprised at ever turn. There were only a few pieces I was able to pick up before they happened, but how they happened managed to shock me even more than just figuring them out I think. Also, Julie Kagawa writes some fierce action scenes. They are one of the best parts of her books. The ending is an absolute killer – I was so emotionally involved in the book by this point that I was gasping and getting the chills at the complete turn Kagawa throws at readers. I CANNOT wait for book 3. The Eternity Cure had me absolutely riveted – I was stuck to my chair and did not want to put it down the entire time. Related posts: Waiting on Wednesday 184 – The Eternity Cure by Julie Kagawa The Immortal Rules by Julie Kagawa Book Review The Eternity Cure Tour: Sarren + Giveaway

...Man Booker International prize goes to (very) short-story writer Lydia Davis

By Adrian West. 1. “La mélancolie elle-même n’est qu’un souvenir qui s’ignore.”—Flaubert.[1]  Is this an instance of the false passive, or of a genuine reflexive?  Of memory neglected by an agent outside of it, or of memory ignoring itself?  For while an opposition may be drawn between a subject and his own memories, which take on for him a more or less foreign appearance—the mind’s furnishings, rather than the mind itself—it remains true that without these memories he has nothing, is nothing; that his entire mode of self-presentation—that is, of being—hinges on the constant resort to memory. The memories that provoke melancholy—neglected, overlooked, forgotten—Flaubert’s verb suggests all these—relate, however obscurely, to duties unfulfilled.  The nature of what has been left undone in relation to the figures of memory is often opaque—the mere fact of my having a mother, for example, sometimes pains me inexplicably—because what we take to be the ideal form of our relation to others and to the world, our understanding of our duty to them, tends toward the vague, half-hearted, and commonplace, to the extent that it can be said to exist at all; perhaps because the enlargement of our understanding of the scope of our moral lives, of the effect our least actions have upon our social and physical environment, has been outpaced by the constantly multiplying amusements, temptations, and merely formal obligations to which we subject ourselves; we are morally confused and exhausted, overwhelmed by the variety of choices that face us and pulled at each instant toward novelty, and have shunted off our ultimate choices, to use Peter Singer’s term, those acts of moral reckoning wherein we tell ourselves the truth about our doings and their aftermath and begin at last to take ourselves seriously as moral subjects, into ever-receding tomorrow.  What is due from us is never clear, and melancholy is nothing more than the intrusion of this lack of clarity, and of the vital longing to dispel it, upon life’s constant progression-into—into love affairs, into acquisitions and enterprises—adherence to which seems to preclude attention to that longing.  Whereas the way is always paved for our instrumental undertakings, for our role in the self-perpetuating and self-aggrandizing impulses of society, to which everyone appears both party and partisan, when, in our hearts, it strikes us it might be better to live according to the dictates of our conscience, the path we are led to is fraught with solitude and uncertainty. 2. Freud asserts:  “The hysteric suffers mainly from reminiscences.”  Hysteria, in this sense, is the acute form of bad conscience, whereas melancholy is bad conscience in abeyance. If hysteria was once thought to be the quintessentially modern form of neurosis, this relates to the profusion of choices thrust upon modern man, virtually all of which have a moral component but which are decided according to instrumental considerations; the memory of these choices, and of the compromised way in which we make them, continues to weigh on us, along with the intimation that we may someday be made to answer for them, and for the disregard of conscience that enabled them.  When the anxiety they provoke is no longer bearable, the sufferer breaks down.  The attacks of nerves frequently described in Chekhov, in “Terror,” for example, are studies of this sort of hysteria. 3. If reading Chekhov makes us melancholy, it is doubtless because he is the writer most concerned with, and most effective at, rousing our conscience from its wonted slumber.  At times we are melancholy because of our own bad conscience; but at others—when we read “Heartache” or the last paragraphs of “About Love”—we are moved by glimpses of a world in which the moral imperative has been, or might be, obeyed.  A serenity pervades these examples, such as overcomes us before a painting of Vermeer’s. 4. Having written the foregoing sentence, I began to think of Vermeer, and then of 

Ride with Me by Ruthie Knox Published: February 13, 2012 by Loveswept Source: ebook gifted from a friend In this fun, scorching-hot eBook original romance by Ruthie Knox, a cross-country bike adventure takes a detour into unexplored passion. As readers will discover, Ride with Me is not about the bike! When Lexie Marshall places an ad for a cycling companion, she hopes to find someone friendly and fun to cross the TransAmerica Trail with. Instead, she gets Tom Geiger—a lean, sexy loner whose bad attitude threatens to spoil the adventure she’s spent years planning. Roped into the cycling equivalent of a blind date by his sister, Tom doesn’t want to ride with a chatty, go-by-the-map kind of woman, and he certainly doesn’t want to want her. Too bad the sight of Lexie with a bike between her thighs really turns his crank. Even Tom’s stubborn determination to keep Lexie at a distance can’t stop a kiss from leading to endless nights of hotter-than-hot sex. But when the wild ride ends, where will they go next? [goodreads] This book took me by total surprise! Based on this cover and that description above, I was expecting a light, fun adult romance set along a bike trail across the US. What I got was a captivating story with many layers, and characters that left me thinking about them long after this adventure ended. With just under 200 pages, I was able to read this story in a day, but that's not due to the short length; it was because I literally could not put it down. Between the humor and wit, alongside the adventure and romance, I was completely inside this story from cover to cover. Tom's sister insists that he find a riding companion to make the trek across the TransAmerica trail, traveling west to east by bike. He's a loner though, and he has reasons for being kept to himself. Five years ago his world was turned upside down, which caused him to retreat physically and emotionally. Venturing out on the open road with his bicycle took on a whole new perspective for himself, so the last thing he wanted to do was share that road with someone else. Lexie has been planning this bike trip for most of her life. After all, it's how her parents met and fell in love. She's a school teacher who is spending her summer biking it across the country. Lexie is looking for a riding companion for safety reasons, someone to share a tent next to hers at the road side campgrounds, and be there in case of a flat. These two characters end up at the starting line, with very different agendas, and embark on a journey that will change their paths, both figuratively and purposefully. I don't know much about cycling, but Ruthie Knox describes things as though I was an experienced rider myself. I never felt lost or confused, always able to imagine exactly what was happening in bike terms. The ease of her writing carried over into the witty banter between Lexie and Tom. At first these two characters want nothing to do with the other, but as the miles edge on, so do their feelings for one another. The portrait that Knox creates is beautifully set against the American highways, stretching across the Rocky Mountains and into the Great Plains. The scenery was beautiful to witness through her words, but it felt believable through the characters interpretations of it. My favorite moments lie in the complexity of both Lexie and Tom. I was not expecting this much depth in an adult romance. Their personalities that challenged one another really took me by surprise, but it was a pleasant surprise that matched this story so well. I am still amazed that Knox was able to fit so much depth and complexity into a tight fit story, and made it work so so well. Trust me when I say you want to read this book. Look past that cheesy cover, and believe me when I say it's a story that will surprise you. I am now on a quest to read more by this fabulous author. This particular story is the epitome of what I love so much in a contem

The late Chris LeDoux was the genuine article, a champion rodeo cowboy and a fine country singer. He enjoyed considerable success with his music late in his life, after years of struggling. I really like all of his songs, including this one.

Yesterday they announced that Lydia Davis wins the Man Booker International Prize 2013, as she becomes the fifth winner of this biennial would-be Nobel alternative, awarded: "to a living author who has published fiction either originally in English or whose work is generally available in translation in the English language". What stands out immediately, of course, is that this is now the third time in a row that the prize has gone to a North American author (after Alice Munro in 2009 and Philip Roth in 2011), and that four of the five prizes have gone to English-writing authors (longtime -- nearly a quarter of a century -- US resident Chinua Achebe took the prize in 2007, and only Ismail Kadare bucked what became the trend, in 2005). Obviously, written-in-English fiction has a home field advantage, exacerbated by the fact that there have never been clear guidelines as to who should be eligible -- recall that in 2005 judge Alberto Manguel 'lamented' that they couldn't consider the likes of Peter Handke, António Lobo Antunes, Michel Tournier, and Christa Wolf, among others, because not enough of their books were available in English (see my previous mention), yet this year authors such as Marie NDiaye and Intizar Husain made the cut, more than two of either's books in English translation you're unlikely to find in any bookstore in the continental US (or insular Britain). I think Davis is a fine choice, but the Man Booker International Prize obviously has a serious identity problem on its hands. This choice already makes it hard for them to keep their international credibility, at least internationally; one more time down this road and they'll lose any remaining credibility -- which isn't the kind of pressure that should be hovering over any literary prize. For all the whingeing that goes on about the Nobel-awarding Swedish Academy and its predilection for obscure, non-North American authors: from abroad, this has got to look considerably worse. It was an interesting group of finalists, with seven of the ten authors with books under review at the complete review -- though not, regrettably, Lydia Davis (though I am a fan). I guess I really will have to finally get around to putting up a review of the marvelous The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis -- but go ahead and get your copy first (really -- it's worthwhile); see the Picador publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk. Note also that the winner's name was leaked -- a Times of India report (since removed, but originally here; remnants visible here) had the report about three hours before the official announcement -- I'm curious to hear what happened there.

The Guardian prints an edited version of Atiq Rahimi's keynote speech to the Edinburgh World Writers' Conference which I mean(t) to point you to -- but they note that 'the full transcripts of all the speeches' are available at the Edinburgh World Writers' Conference site and I can't believe I've never seen this trove. Yes, there's not just Rahimi's speech in full but, for example, all the keynote speeches on The Future of the Novel, and sure I'd like to comment on the Rahimi and some of the others but who cares what I have to say -- if you haven't seen this stuff just dive in there -- a holiday weekend is approaching in the US, right ? well, this seems a good site to explore in that time -- I think that's what I might be doing.