I try to write a brief paragraph after I finish a book. The paragraphs are not really meant to be reviews, more so a kind of reflection on whatever comes to mind about the book. If I read the book in Spanish, I write the reflection in Spanish. Same for English.
Another short and sweet debut, this time a short story collection set in the Arab community in Dearborn, Michigan. Strong tragic and comedic elements in every story, funny moments interpersed with stories of ICE/FBI raids, generational trauma. Explores themes of sexuality, gender equality and diaspora politics/culture through stories. Some hit harder than others, but overall I found it wonderful and impressive. The fact that it's a debut is exciting, another author to follow in real time! None of the debut novels I've read were new when I read them.
I picked this book randomly when I found it on my Libby homepage. It's a romantic comedy set around the time immediately before and after the 2010 Haitian earthquake. It was called goudou-godou due to how it sounded as it was happening. I was on the other side of the island when it happened and I felt it, it was strong and scary. Anyways, I really enjoyed this book. It's story is told from the perspective of the Haitian president, his wife, and his wife's lover. It read like a novela (soap opera in english?), some melodramatic moments here and there which made the book very entretaining. The writing felt a bit clunky here and there, but overall I loved the time I spent with this book, some scenes have still stuck with me. It's a short book and this author's debut novel. Excited to see what other stuff he puts out in the future.
This is a short book comprised of three lectures given by Stuart Hall in 1994. The book includes a deep discussion about the relationship between race, ethinicity and nation. If I had to summarize the main argument, it's that these three categories have very shaky foundations. With regards to race, which is a category created by and for racism based on the supposed "reality" of race as biologically founded (think of the pseudoscience of phrenology). Stuart Hall asks how we can move past the need to provide a foundation for race at the biological level. He argues that even W.E.B DuBois was acutely aware of this paradox.
So he says okay, we need to move past that but what do we have left if not the real fact that people are racialized because of their skin? Does that not mean that race is real at that level? Stuart Hall says sure, but it exposes the fact that race is a discursive concept. A discursive concept is one that is subject to real material conditions but that gains its meaning as a concept in human conversation. In other words, "race" is real because it has been kept as a concept in human discourse since its creation. Historically used to oppress a certain people, but ultimately reappropriated by those same communities as a way to redefine the concept.
He moves on from this and asks -- if race is discursive how can we understand the differences within race? What are the tings that connect African Americans from Africans in Nigeria, Egypt? How about the African diaspora in the Caribbean? Clearly there are important things differences that are not accurately captured under the definition of race. Hence his turn towards ethnicity. Ethnicity, for Stuart Hall, is the function of a particular time and a particular place -- the culture that stems from those material and temporal conditions are what comprise an ethnicity. Sure, because of common histories they might look the same, but this only a small piece of that puzzle. In summary, Hall argues that again, the concept is incomplete: within a given ethinicity, differences in territory, language and therefore culture can be quite marked. With the emergence of the nation, we've found ways to intertwine racial and ethnic difference into a new concept, one organized within a particular territory but now with a latent political dimension.
Nations are described by Stuart Hall as "imagined communities" -- communities whose story is enforced, manufactured in a way to justify itself. An example of this is how traditional historical accounts of America's founding upheld a narrative of indigenous communities being backjward, eager to assimilate or outright hostile, therefore justifying their eventual subordination/eradication. This is a necessary story and one that defines an imagined community. I think Stuart might have been very cynical in this approach, arguing that an imagined community has a strong element of political power to it -- imagined communities are to a great extent enforced. They have defined racial, ethnic boundaries. These often exlude people who might occupy the same space but are not considered part of that community, or are only given partial access to it. The concept of the nation, therefore, does not completely capture the different on-the-ground realities of cultural identity.
Lastly, and to problematize this further, Stuart Hall discusses the profound importance of diaspora movements in subverting the "fateful triangle" of race, ethinicity and nation. The diaspora is a community devoid of particular place and even time. Sure, one could argue that they are from a particular place and time, but precisely because of their displaced/transnational perspectived, they cannot help but create new cultural practices. They do not merely translate their culture but recreate it anew. Stuart Hall is a bit ambiguous here, but I think that he would argue that Diaspora movements provide fertile ground for analyzing the real functions and origins of cultural identities, and how these can exist outside nationalistic expectations. Stuart does not seem to argue that everybody should join a diaspora, but instead to rethink the questions that diaspora communities pose about our fundamental beliefs about who we are and how we present ourselves in the world.
The world of graphic novels is still very new to me. But I knew about this series since I was 15 or 16. I finally decided to go through it, and thanks to my library, I was able to borrow all eleven volumes and read them on my iPad. I realize now not only how mature it is in its content (explicit sexual imagery and graphic violence) but in its writing too. I now think I would not have fully understood the themes of the comic book if I had read it ten years ago. I think this is the kind of novel that grows with its readers, and every re-read one can connect more with the character that most reflects the readers own stage in life.
To summarize what I currently think about this book, I'll say that it is a expertly written and illustrated work of literature. A story about a family and their journey through space while fleeing from oppressive forces, is also a story about nationalism, racism, homophobia and violence. It can be very funny and dark, which is hard to do right without it seeming cheap or overdone. I recommend it very highly not only for people who want to get into comic books, but also for fans of science fiction with a latent political message. And yes, it might seem like the world-building simply extrapolates our current political debates into a distant future, but I think in this case it works despite being brazen. It should be celebrated as being something genuinely authentic as a work of art made to represent and celebrate those who fall outside of the societal definition of full human beings: from racism to transphobia.
A good and relatively short book that I read throughout February and March, as I was moving houses. I really enjoyed this book, though I am not a lover of history books or the Roman Empire, I found myself liking the people featured in this book, and the epistolary format really lent itslef ot picking it up and back down. There is something about meeting characters through their journal or correspondences with others that is really rewarding, and thought-provoking. It gives room for my imagination to fill in the blanks here and there. Some of the dialogue and things said are very powerful, and Williams proves to be a good writer who can make a comeplling story by shifting the order of corrrespondences.
The book gives you an interesting perspectgive on Augustus' life, and themes of power, legacy, politics, love and rhetoric. A very rich book, and one I am sure to reread in the future.
This section stood out to me:
The young man, who does not know the future, sees life as a kind of epic adventures, an Odyssey through strange seas and unkown islands, where he will test and prove his poiwers, anmd thereby discover his immortality. The man of middle years, who has lived the future that he once dreamed, sees life as a tragedy, for he has learned that his poweeer, however greast, will not prevail against those forces of accident and nature to which he gives the names of gods, and has learned that he is mortal., BUt the man of age, if heplays his assigned role properly must see life as comdedy. For his triumphs and his failures merge, and one is no more the occasion for pride or shame than the other, and he is neither the hero who proves himself against those forces, nor the protagonist who is destroyed by them. Like anyu poor, pitiable shell of an actor, he comes to see that he has played so many parts that hetere no longer is himself.
This one's a graphic novel. And a really good one. It was recommended in a forum that I frequent and I'm glad I followed through and borrowed it from the library. It's a story about a girl who leaves her home in Nova Scotia, a very small town on the east coast of Canada, to go work at one of Canada's booming oil fields. As a woman in a very masculine environment, she has to withstand a lot of uncomfortable moments and sublte (and non-subtle) forms of sexual harrassment and assault. The comic's treatment of the complicated aspects of migrating for labor is very well done and even had me relating, as someone wholly unfamiliar with how labor migration works in Canada.
The are some very funny aspects of the book, and some parts where there is a lot of loneliness, doubt and despair. I think this is a great comic to start with if you want to get into comics that aren't manga or superheroes.
I know that I will read this book a second time this year. It's unlike anything I've ever read before, and that makes it hard to describe or recommend. Two things came to mind as I was reading it. One, he pulls off what Italo Calvino tried to do in If on a winter's night a traveler..., as in writing a book that is a conversation between the author and their reader. It's not the same kind of book, because Calvino's book feels much more humorous or magic-trick like, whereas in this one it's something the author does to distance himself from you the reader, of letting you know that he is aware that there are certain memories and feelings language is not able to communicate. In that case it's less a conversation and more the case of an author anticipating, indulging and even challenging the reader. The idea of exploring the indefinable ways that memories, experiences and impressions relate to one another outside of space and time and language is the central idea of this book, and this is expressed in the way the book is written. The structure is therefore quite loose and there is not much to grasp in terms of characters and plot, so I think that might turn some people off. This book is about the vibes mainly, and I enjoyed just hanging out in that world.
The second thing is related to the first, that this book is like if someone where to stack photographs of moments in one's life one after the other, and then somehow altered the opacity of the photographs so that when looked from above they all seem to blend into one another. Murnane recalls memories within memories, or provides a motif repeated throughout different moments of his life, connecting people in different places and at different times.
This book is one that I just let myself enjoy. If I were to try to piece together the chronological order and the defining characteristics of each event and character, I would hate the book. But it is because Murnane is trying to tell us that this is not the point. If you trust him you know that if he thought it mattered he would have put it all into its specific place and time, as he does do throughout the book. The instances where Murnane focuses on a particular event or experience, he does so powerfully, showing that he knows what a moment is and what context is.
Can't wait to read this again and the rest of his work.This book was wild. I don't know how else to describe it but Ottessa has a sick imagination and I honestly couldn't stop reading it, I think I read it in 2 days. Ottessa has a way of slowly revealing the madness of her world, of subverting your expectations of what kind of story is being told. I think to some it might seem like the appeal is just the shock factor of all the violence and gore, but the narrative and style of her speech is really engaging and always keeps you guessing, or keeps you on your toes so to speak. I also feel like Ottessa might be looking at the setting and characters from a very ironic distance. The book is set in an undefined feud in Europe, which is very removed from the modern settings Ottessa usually explores. This distance from the setting of the book adds to any interpretation or enjoyment of the book, as you can either live "in" the book as it is told and just be disgusted at everything that happens in it, or you can take a step back and try to see where she is going with it, in other words, regard the author as herself playing a role in the story. The books goes to sometimes absurd situations that might even be funny in how over the top they are. If this is the case, what is Ottessa trying to communicate when she seems to be telling this story with an ironic tone in her speech?
It reminded me of Notes from the Underground. The narrator is a true Hater, and the book is very funny and it was a perspective on Austrian society that I wasn't expecting. It's a pretty scathing indictment of Viennese culture, particularly its artist culture and "petit bourgeoisie pretensions" though the book has many good parts, I particularly liked the ending:
"I hated them, yet found them somehow touching -- i hated Vienna, yet found it somehow touching -- I cursed these people, yet could not help loving them -- I hated Vienna yet could not help loving it. And now, as I ran through the streets of the Inner City, I thought: This is my city and always will be my city, these are my people and always will be my people, and as I went un running, I though: I've survived this dreadful *artistic dinner,* just as I've survived all the other horrors[...]"
Definitely a unique book unlike anything I have read before and I'm looking forward to reading the rest of his work.
This book was a bit different in substance than Mishima's other books that I've read. This one was much more idyllic, more dreamlike in its language and characterization. Though it still features Mishima's perceptive approach to human actions and their origins in (sometimes dark) human emotions, the book itself is unproblematic, a clear triumph of the good over evil. I say this sort of ironically, hence why I am not sure if I like it as much as the other books. However, it was a breeze to read and I ultimately enjoy and can recall certain scenes of the book (which only happens with books that leave a big impression on me). It all tied up nicely in the end, and it's a satisfying straight arrow of a book. I decided to take a break from Mishima, though *Confessions of a Mask* is still on the table for me.
This book I really enjoyed because it was a short, nice read. Very dark still, but very evocative and it felt like a short film. This time Mishima is dealing with three characters and constantly switching between the three perspectives, the three inner dialogues and ways of interpreting the world. I found it quite skillful.
This is the second book where Mishima seems to want to inhabit the worlds of three characters and explore something dark in their worldview. I know that "dark" is a simplification, but it really does seem like Mishima has a sensibility towards things that are beautiful and kind of dark at the same time. I think Mishima is tapped into something very unique and I look forward to reading the other books of his I got.
Leí este libro en español y honestamente no fue la mejor traducción. Algunas de las secciones eran difícil de entender y tenía que detenerme y leer al paso, algo que no me importa hacer, pero esta vez pensé que esa dificultad fue porque la traducción se tropezaba e intentaba descifrarr lo que pensaba que quería decir. Aun así, me preocupa un poco que algunos pasajes del libro no tuvieron el impacto deseado. Aun así, el libro fue impactante y realmente no he leído algo así. Algo de él me recordó mucho a Raskolnikov, o a los personajes de Dostoyevski en general.
El libro se aferra al diálogo interno del protagonista. Mishima logra mantenerme atento a como cambia el personaje, como el personaje se ve afectado por sus relaciones, y las conclusiones (algunas terribles, algunas lucidas) que saca al reflexionar.
Me interesa el mundo de Mishima. Es sorprendente la capacidad que tiene de describir pensamientos y filosofías oscuras. Pero para Mishima no son oscuras y oscura implica cierta definición de lo que está bien o mal. Mishima más bien genera personajes cuya ética (ética siendo las reglas de vida que yacen de un pensar moral) es sui generis, es decir, producto de un proceso íntimo, separado de los demás y, por lo tanto, misántropo. De esa forma, Mishima invita al lector, y da el efecto de marearlo hasta que parte de él se identifique con los personajes que hablan abiertamente sobre sus deseos e impulsos nefastos, egoístas o perversos. Para mí eso es un logro y quiero ver que más puede darme.
Es la segunda vez que me leo este libro, la última vez creo que fue en el 2018, no me acuerdo bien. Recuerdo que en ese entonces el libro me marco, aunque no supe explicarlo, no súper entenderlo del todo. Creo que por eso me gusto más Detectives Salvajes por un tiempo, es una novela más directa, y corta en sí.
Pero 2666 esta vez la entendí más y me impresiono mucho más también. Y lo interesante es que todavía creo que la puedo leer par de veces más, es una novela que nunca se desenvuelve del todo. Bolaño parece ser un genio, o por lo menos, parece que Bolaño estaba atado o montado en algo que lo dejo ver muy lejos y muy cerca al mismo tiempo. Creo que todo autor tiene su tema, aunque sea indefinible, pero lo tiene. "Tema" puede significar un problema filosófico, algo que si no se resuelve, por lo menos se puede estudiar. Bolaño parece estar estudiando la vida en su horror y belleza, algo que suena reductivo y quizás cursi, pero aun así es cierto -- Bolaño parece ser capaz de mostrar una atrocidad, un exceso de violencia, odio o indiferencia, como algo indudablemente humano y, por lo tanto, algo superable. Por lo tanto, esta lectura tiene ciertas tildes optimistas que quizás no había visto antes.
Hoy la terminé, después de varios meses. Esta novela es algo que para mí sigue siendo un enigma, lo cual no me molesta, de hecho me gusta no entenderla del todo, aunque cada vez creo que entiendo más y más, o la entiendo en otro aspecto. Este proceso de dilucidar y hacer más preguntas es divertido y me ayuda a entender más el mundo, o mejor dicho, me ayuda a entender como entender el mundo, si entender el mundo es posible y si no, que se hace.
Me parece raro que haya leído esta novela hace 3 años, porque no sé que le saque en ese entonces, si ahora es que siento que la estoy entendiendo, aunque solo un poco. Y digo la palabra entender en el sentido de que me pareció confusa pero intrigante -- al final entiendo que el libro es sobre el amor y la pasión y la historia y la violencia cotidiana, la locura y la sanidad. Pero aun así para mí esos temas son como mares o montañas o terrenos que no sugieren un camino o un orden especifico, y se pueden abarcar de formas distintas. Si Bolaño, con esta novela, logra adentrarnos en una jungla de significados, de memorias incoherentes y de sueños y pesadillas, guerras y asesinatos, es válido dar la vuelta y trazar el camino explorado, tratar de ver su comienzo y su fin, su razón de ser (si es que tiene razon de ser). Dilucidar ese camino se hizo más fácil esta vez, pero el trabajo no está completo y me tocaría una tercera relectura. O una, cuarta, quinta, sexta.
Mi primer libro de Bioy Casares. A primera lectura me intereso más que un cuento de Borges, aunque tengo tiempo sin leer uno de esos. Bioy Casares parece estar genuinamente interesado en explorar la relación que tenemos hacia el concepto de destino, de voluntad propia y de la miseria que esos dos conceptos implican. Me gusto que Clara, la esposa del protagonista, no es un personaje secundario que se deja someter por las fuerzas del mundo. Bioy Casares está muy orgulloso de ella y se nota, y me hace quererla también.
Aunque creo que hay algunas cosas que no entendí o que no domino del todo, por ejemplo lo que se puede decir el argumento principal, puedo aproximarme: El libro es sobre el deseo fútil y la miseria que genera querer revivir el pasado, detalladamente narra como lleva eso Gauna a la locura. Aun así no me desentiendo de Gauna y sus motivaciones, algunas visiones o memorias se apoderan de ti y uno necesita mucho autocontrol para no querer explorarlas. Y explorarlas en este caso significa querer revivirlas, y eso significa dañarlas o violar su estatus como memoria, lo cual es horrible.