1Q84, by Haruki Murakami (#1)

I have mixed feelings about it.

On the one hand, i enjoyed the story and will continue with books 2 and 3. On the other hand, with regards to the female characters, it reads like a male fantasy version of these characters.

P.S It’s annoying the way this trilogy has been published. I purchased the Kindle edition which has books 1-2 bundled together but i can’t buy book 3 on its own. That leaves me with the options of either buying the physical version of the book or buying the entire trilogy on Kindle.

 

Books in 2016

What a glorious year it was. One of the best i can remember in every way. In terms of quality, quantity and variety.

I really have to start with Elena Ferrante’s books which have been added to my all time favourite books. A masterpiece book series.

Marie Kondo’s The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up had a profound effect on me which helped me de-clutter my life significantly. It’s a book i keep going back to and read a chapter here and there.

I also managed to re-read a book which once again met my very high expectations, To Kill a Mockingbird.

Two remarkable books on the Congo, King Leopold’s Ghost and Dancing in the Glory of Monsters.

The Signature of all Things was probably the surprise of the year. I picked it up after reading James Harris’ “review“. Alma Whittaker was a wonderful character.

The complete list of books read below.

NON-FICTION

MUST READ

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing, by Marie Kondo

King Leopold’s Ghost, by Adam Hoschild

Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa, by Jason Stearns

HIGHLY RECOMMEND

Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West, by Hampton Sides

Breaking Rockefeller: The Incredible Story of the Ambitious Rivals Who Toppled an Empire, by Peter B. Doran

RECOMMEND

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, by Susan Cain

Love’s Executioner and Other Tales of Psychotherapy, by Irvin D. Yalom

FICTION

MUST READ

To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee (this was a re-read)

The Signature of All Things, by Elizabeth Gilbert

The Story of The Lost Child, by Elena Ferrante

Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, by Elena Ferrante

The Story of a New Name, by Elena Ferrante

My Brilliant Friend, by Elena Ferrante

HIGHLY RECOMMEND

A Man Called Ove, by Fredrik Backman

The Gift of Rain, by Tan Twan Eng

The Big Nowhere, by James Ellroy

The Ace of Skulls, by Chris Wooding

RECOMMEND

Imperium: A Novel of Ancient Rome, by Robert Harris

AVOID

The Inheritance of Loss, by Kiran Desai

 

 

Books in 2017

This is my first post about books in almost 2.5 years. I never did write a review of books i read for 2016 and for 2015 i wrote something in August detailing the year up until then. My intention was to just cover 2017 but after seeing how great a year 2016 was it would be a shame to not write a post about that year too.

Let’s get back to 2017 though. Now that i’ve written all the books down i can see what has always felt to have been a very poor year. Maybe mediocre is a better word for it. I had a craving for thrillers and unfortunately most of my picks proved to be quite forgettable.

The exceptions (highlighted below in bold) were Luke McCallin’s Gregor Reinhart Trilogy and A Delicate Truth by John Le Carre.

Another thing that catches the eye is that i only read 1 non-fiction book. I am not sure why to be honest.

Finally at the end of this year i wanted to read books that my eldest niece (almost 10 years old) is reading. I started with The Witches by Roald Dahl which was disappointing but followed it up last week with the brilliant Matilda. I feel children books will be a theme for me this year.

NON-FICTION

Dollars and Sense: How we Misthink Money and How to Spend Smarter, by Dan Ariely

FICTION

The Divided City, by Luke McCallin

The Pale House, by Luke McCallin

The Man from Berlin, by Luke McCallin

Sashenka, by Simon Sebag Montefiore

The Girl Who Wasn’t There, by Ferdinach von Schirach

Anything is Possible, by Elizabeth Strout

Bad Blood, by Brian McGilloway

My Name is Lucy Barton, by Elizabeth Strout

A Delicate Truth, by John Le Carre

The Collini Case, by Ferdinach von Schirach

The Witches, by Roald Dahl

Empire State, by Adam Christopher

 

 

 

 

Books (non-fiction)

I’ve been a busy bookworm this year. One of the things i love about books is that they are rarely affected by my “mood”. It’s the most stable hobby in my life.

Currently i’m re-reading The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 by Christopher Munro Clark. If you are at all interested in history this is a fantastic book.

What about the rest of the year?

Political Order and Politcal Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalisation of Democracy by Francis Fukuyama – Highly recommended

• This is a big, deep, thought provoking book. Fukuyama’s writing is accessible and I found it highly relevant particularly with the current economic and political crisis in Europe. It’s a book i definitely want to go back to at a later stage. I’ve also added the prequel to this, The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the Industrial Revolution, to my to-read list.

Drugs Without the Hot Air: Minimising the Harms of Legal and Illegal Drugs by David J. Nutt – Highly recommended

• An eye opener which made me question my knowledge and beliefs on the war on drugs (along with El Narco below), cannabis but especially with regards to alcohol. The final chapter titled, What should i tell my kids about drugs, is outstanding.

El Narco: Inside Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency by Ioan Grillo – Recommended

• Another highly relevant book. There were a few chapters where my attention waned significantly (e.g Culture and Faith) but it was an interesting book on a current issue which i only know about through newspaper headlines. The plan was to read El Narco as an introduction, to prepare myself for the book i’m more interested in, Narcoland by Anabel Hernandez.

Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression by Andrew Solomon

• This was the most tough to read. It was a combination of the subject and his writing. I would loved to read this if it was better edited and significantly shorter. Chapters such as Suicide, Addiction, Politics were all interesting but there’s so much stuff thrown in there i found myself losing focus and interest at time. The worst was the section spent on the drugs and their side effects. Difficult to recommend unless you are very interested in the subject but it’s a book i would go back to and read bits and pieces.

We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

• There’s nothing new here. I should not have read this. It’s a written version of a TED talk she gave. Watch that instead. She is a terrific writer though as you will see from my Fiction Books post.

 

30 Books to read in 2015

This post and exercise was inspired by James’ post Picking 52 Books to Read in 2015.

My main goal is to improve on 2014 (i.e. > 21) and reverse the downward trend of the last 3 years. A secondary goal is to read more non-fiction books. For this purpose I’ve compiled a list of 30 books, 18 of which are non-fiction while the remaining 12 are fiction.

A byproduct of this exercise is that it has forced me to think more about what i’m reading instead of taking the mostly impulsive decision after finishing a book. Also, while doing the exercise i had a look at my shelves and Kindle Cloud and added many books which i already own but have not yet read. I have highlighted these in brown.

I’m happy with what I’ve chosen for fiction. After the disappointing 2014 experience, this year I’ve shown preference towards the more established books instead of new publications.

My to-read list is on Goodreads and when i went through the non-fiction books in order to make a selection i realised that i didn’t have that many to choose from and so i decided to start looking for more options outside my to-read list.

Now i think it’s a better list with my natural preference towards historical books but i have also thrown in some which are a bit different such as Where Did You Go? Out. What Did You Do? Nothing., Drugs Without the Hot Air: Minimising the Harms of Legal and Illegal Drugs and A Calendar of Wisdom: Daily Thoughts to Nourish the Soul. Many of these books are on the long side so i’m aware that the aim of reading 18 might be optimistic.

Regardless of how it goes i have to admit that i enjoyed doing this!

Something i would like to do next in 2015 is to start a small book club with 1-2 friends but that’s another post!

	NON-FICTION BOOK	Author
1	Drugs Without the Hot Air: Minimising the Harms of Legal and Illegal Drugs	David Nutt
2	Where Did You Go? Out. What Did You Do? Nothing.	Robert P. Smith
3	Puskas on Puskas	Ferenc Puskas
4	Capital in the Twenty-First Century	Thomas Piketty
5	The Gate	Francois Bizot
6	War from the Ground Up	Emile Simpson
7	Private Empire: Exxon Mobil and American Power	Steve Coll
8	King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa	Adam Hochschild
9	A Calendar of Wisdom: Daily Thoughts to Nourish the Soul	Fyodor Dostoyevski
10	The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger	Marc Levinson
11	Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II	John W. Dower
12	Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, The Damascus Incident and the Illusion of Safety	Eric Schlosser
13	Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo and the Battle that Defined a Generation	Blake J. Harris
14	Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam	Frances Fitzgerald
15	Empire of Difference: The Ottomans in Comparative Perspective	Karen Barkey
16	Lawrence in Arabia: Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East	Scott Anderson
17	Not Even My Name: A True Story	Thea Halo
18	Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire	David Remnick

	FICTION BOOK	Author
1	Middlesex	Jeffrey Eugenides
2	Remains of the Day	Kazuo Ishiguro
3	Small Island	Andrea Levy
4	Johnny Got His Gun	Dalton Trumbo
5	All the King’s Men	Robert P. Warren
6	The Ace of Skulls	Chris Wooding
7	The Orphan Master’s Son	Adam Johnson
8	The Catcher in the Rye	J.D Salinger
9	Brave New World	Aldous Huxley
10	The Fall	Albert Camus
11	Sophie’s World	Jostein Gaarder
12	Crime and Punishment	Fyodor Dostoyevski

 

Books in 2014

26 in 2012

23 in 2013

21 in 2014

Is this a trend?

I hope it’s not but it’s clear that other activities are taking up more of my time. I’m not sure how i feel about that. Books are the only thing that have always been a part of me. In bad times and in good times.

What is also clear is that i need to be more careful when choosing what to read, particularly when it comes to fiction. Far too many of the books I read this year proved to be disappointing. Only one fiction book, The Secret Garden, is on my Must Read list. I will need to do better “research” when making a decision of what to read. Also, it’s probably best to avoid recent publications and focus more on older publications. A question that i will be making myself whenever i decide on a book to read is why? Why this book?

For example.

I’m currently re-reading The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope. Why? Because i loved it the first time and it’s even better the second time. Even though the events described take place in the 19th century they still apply today.

I’ve also started reading Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy, by Francis Fukuyama. Why? Because i think the world is going through a lot of changes, especially Europe. Democracy as we know it is proving to be unable to provide the answers to the problems we are facing. Sometimes it’s even part of the problem.

I realise my answers are a bit lame. But they will do for now.

Only 6 out of the 21 books were non-fiction which is surprising to see as i seem to be getting more out of them. Granted, two of them were epic but i still could have read more.

It’s a shame that i only thought about my reading at the end of the year instead of during. That can change.

STATS

• 6 out of 21 books are non-fiction
• 1 out of 21 was an audio book
• 1 out of 21 was written by a female author
• 1 out of 21 was a re-read

MUST READ

The Secret Garden, by Frances Hogson Burnett

This is the only fiction book to make it to the top. I read this twice, once with my niece in Greek and then the original English version on my own. Even in the poorly translated Greek version the message of this book comes through. The joy for life. A must read for children and adults alike.

A Life too Short: The Tragedy of Robert Enke, by Ronald Reng

A heart wrenching book about the life of the German goalkeeper, Robert Enke. He struggled with depression and in spite of the help from his family and friends he committed suicide at the prime of his life. If i was doing a Book of the Year award this would probably have been it. This is a very personal choice for me. Tremendous.

The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power, by Daniel Yergin

Now with the tumbling of oil prices in 2014 the timing of this epic book was perfect. What we are seeing now has happened many, many times before. It helps putting events into perspective.

Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914, by Christopher Munro Clark

This book does exactly what it says on the tin. It does not cover the war but what led to it and whether it could have been prevented. A war i knew, and still do, very little about.

I also re-read The Sense of an Ending, by Julian Barnes (Audio Book). Still a brilliant book.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

• The Iron Jackal (Tales of the Ketty Jay *3), by Chris Wooding – Reminds me of Firefly the TV show. I love this book series. Makes me feel i’m a teenager when i’m reading it. 
• An Officer and a Spy, by Robert Harris
• Gorky Park, by Martin Cruz Smith – Re-read after around 20 years. A superb thriller.
• All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque
• The Quiet American, by Graham Greene
• The Garden of Evening Mists, by Twan Eng Tan – Close to being a Must Read
• Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer (non-fiction)

RECOMMENDED

• A Bracelet of Willow and Copper, by Garrett Alley
• Thousand Cranes, by Yasunari Kawabata

INDIFFERENT/AVOID

• Russian Folk Tales, by Ivan Iakovlevich Bilibin
• Far North, by Marcel Theroux
• Mr Penumbra’s 24-hour Bookstore
• Beauty and Sadness, by Yasunari Kawabata
• The Sound of Things Falling, by Juan Gabriel Vascuez
• The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, by Charles Duhigg (non-fiction)
• Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness (non-fiction)

 

The Secret Garden (3)

This has been one my most memorable and rewarding book experiences. The Secret Garden is our book now. Watching and listening to Sophia react to the story unfolding was such a joy and she became very attached to Mary, Colin, Dickon and of course the robin! She reminded me of why i read books in the first place. Sometimes when i keep doing something over and over again it just becomes a habit and i forget to appreciate it.

We actually finished The Secret Garden a few weeks ago but i waited to post this final post as i wanted to also read the original English book. I wanted to compare. The original is a far, far superior experience. The Greek translation is very poor indeed. Both in terms of the quality of translation but also in omitting several important parts from the story.

The greek translation removes a lot of parts relating to side characters and their background such as the Dr Craven, Mrs Medlock and Ben Weatherstaff. In the original they feel more like real people who have their own story waiting to be told but maybe some other time. It makes them more human.

It also inexcusably and more importantly removes the chapter about Mr Craven which i found to be one of the most important in the entire book. I cannot comprehend how they reached the conclusion that this should not be part of the greek version.

In spite of all these shortcomings, the book was still good enough to be appreciated by both us.

In fact, we soon after started reading The Little Prince and we only made it to the first paragraph of the book when Sophia turned to me and said,

“Can we read The Secret Garden again?”

and i replied,

“Sure”

 

 

 

The Secret Garden (2)

Slowly but surely, Sophia 6.7 and I, are making progress.

She loves it!

I’ve also started reading the original text in english. There is no doubt that it’s a richer reading experience. For example, in the original a few of the characters speak with Yorkshire accents which gives you a greater sense of place. The greek translation makes no such distinction. Also, some parts have been completely removed making it a shorter read. I don’t know for what purpose. Maybe shorter means more accessible?

It made her think that it was curious how much nicer a person looked when he smiled.

The book itself does feel “old”, for example how it deals with race, but it’s such a wonderful and enjoyable read. While it’s a story which deals with the loss of parents, the death of a wife, a loveless early childhood and loneliness it’s also a book filled with so much optimism and joy for life.

Mary, Sophia and I have finally entered The Secret Garden and we are about to meet young Dickon!

 

 

The Secret Garden (children books)

Two weeks ago we (finally) managed to start reading The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnet, together with S6.7. After 2 chapters the book is proving to be quite demanding for the both of us.

When S6.7 has a query about a word it’s actually difficult for me to provide her with a good answer due to my own limitations in the greek language. My first instinct is to simply translate the word to english which of course is not very helpful to S6.7….

Also, she has a lot of questions of the “Why” and “What” nature. Normally, i don’t really mind those but the questions here are about things i don’t feel i’m equipped to answer. It’s quite a dense book and even after only 2 chapters there’s a lot going on.

For example, Mary’s parents are neglecting their daughter and several times it’s mentioned that nobody loves her while she did not love anyone and treated people badly.

“Why did her mother neglect her?” asks S6.7. “Why doesn’t anyone love her?”

For the latter i could scrape an answer such as,

“….because she did not feel loved by her parents, she reacted and treated everyone else badly. She grew up being spoiled and only caring about herself. You need to love and treat people well in order for others to love you.”

That still leaves question number 1, the source of Mary’s early loveless childhood, unanswered. Simply tell her that some people are too selfish and prefer to party than take an interest in their children? That just because you have children it does not necessarily mean that you are a good parent? Is that something she can understand?

Then her parents die of cholera.

S6.7: “What is cholera?”

Me: “It’s a disease. They died because of an illness.”

However, to her cholera is too abstract, like a word i made up and to be perfectly honest a disease i don’t know that much about apart from that it’s no longer as great of a threat as it used to be. I could not answer her next question, “What does it do to you?”. But this only motivates me to find out and tell her which is what i promised her i would do (and i did).

This only sidesteps another issue of the next question which i simply cannot give her a good enough answer.

“Why did both her parents die?”.

Is she finding it difficult to understand that someone can grow up with no parents and experience so much grief? I don’t know. The death question shows its face again in Chapter 2 as we learn about Mr Craven’s history (her widowed uncle).

I want to give her answers. There aren’t any that are universally absolute of course. However, the idea is that they are enough to provoke and stimulate her thinking in order to do her own “research” and reach her own conclusions. The thinking process is much more important  to me than the actual conclusions.

I don’t feel that i’m doing that well at the moment and it’s because i don’t know how. I never really thought about things in that way before. Adults have more or less settled on their thinking of things and discussions between us are usually of one trying to impose his own beliefs on another person. With S6.7, we are talking about someone who simply doesn’t know the world but actually wants to know more about it and she has not already decided on what and how she is supposed to think.

When we started reading books with S6.7 i thought it would be a way for us to spend time together and entertain ourselves but in a way that we would both feel engaged. However, due to the nature of this book it seems that it can’t be as simple as that. No, it’s much more.

 

Summer books (2)

Yeap, the blogger Tiffany was spot on when she said that the best time to read long and slow books is in the summer.

I managed to finish The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power (928 pages) in less than two months (July 2 to August 25). This compares to the 8+ months i spent on The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Considering that i also read A Bracelet of Willow and Copper this was a great decision.

Summer now belongs to the long books! or is it the other way around?! :-S

I should also mention that The Prize is an absolutely brilliant book which i highly recommend.

The plan now was to read an Officer and a Spy next but i ended up starting The Power of Habit. I had given it as a gift to a friend a month ago and i wanted to be able to talk about it. I’m around 10% in though and it’s not exactly the book i thought it would be. It”s basically just stories or “anecdotes” so far. Similar to what you would find in a newspaper or magazine article which is disappointing. I expected something along the lines of Thinking Fast and Slow but it does not seem to be that kind of book. Anyway, it’s short and easy to read so i will keep at it.