Anna Funder: Stasiland

I was in Berlin this week and in a Dance Hall Restaurant that has been preserved as was from the GDR era.  In that city, you can still slip back in time when the Stasis were operating, watching every move of every citizen on every street corner.

Being there, I remembered this book which left a very strange yet strong impression in my mind.  This book has a surprising opening and leads you into the past in an informal fashion and you are casually immersed into the world seen through Anna Funder, meeting people left behind, the ex-Stasis coping with life after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Her writing style is personal yet very observant, the details of how the stasis operated are revealed through the people she meets and talks to in pubs.

When I walk down the streets of East Berlin, I always see glimpses of GDR and makes me think about the complex history the city has experienced.  I would have no idea if the old person I pass in the streets was an ex-Stasi or not in their past life, but surely all of them have experienced the fear of being watched.  At least freedom came to them in the end.

Patricia Cornwell on The Book of The Dead – BBC Radio 5 live

Patricia Cornwall’s interview on Radio 5 – great talk. Even experienced authors struggle to write!

Re-starting from scratch

09/05/2010, originally uploaded by nevealondra.

Sometimes it’s good to start again from scratch.

How should I re-arrange my bookshelf?

By size?

By category?

Do I leave those I want to read again in a reachable position, those I will never read again on the top shelf?

………I think I will do it by size, it always looks nicer…….how do you arrange your bookshelf?

Yann Martel: Life of Pi

He is a fabulous story teller.  I had never read anything like this before. The ending is amazing.

My mouth was getting dry as I traveled on the solitary lifeboat together with Pi and the Bengal Tiger – yes, a Bengal Tiger.

I felt like I was floating for days in the wide ocean with no rescue in sight, then the ending.

Is it me that is going crazy, or Pi that is delirious?  What really happened?

RHS Good Plant Guide, 2000 Plants

When I first moved to England, I lived in the country side in a house with a garden. Seeing that I had a nice garden, my friend gave me this book and I thought I would take interest. I’ve been to garden centres, lived in other houses with gardens as well.

Several years on, I live in a flat with no garden.

Why?  I specifically looked for one WITHOUT a garden.

I will confess, I really don’t have green fingers. If someone else takes care of the garden fab.  I love looking at beautiful plants and trees, can cope with house plants but I don’t seem to have the passion to create a wonderful garden as many English people do.

Shion Miura: Kaze ga tsuyoku fuiteiru (The Wind Blows Strong)

05/05/2010, originally uploaded by nevealondra.

This is a Japanese book I recently read which was a really good story about university students who one day decide to start running long distance marathons with the aim of being selected as an university team in the Hakone Ekiden, one of the toughest marathon relays in Japan.

Hakone Ekiden is a round-trip marthon, which starts in the centre of Tokyo, goes all the way to the Hakone mountains along the coast line over 2 days – one day to climb the mountains, the second day to go down the mountain and come back to Tokyo. Each section is about 20km, run by a different athlete while the whole route is divided into 5 sections per day, so a total of 10 runners.

This book is about one college student who decides to make up a team of 10, those who happen to live in the same student apartment, train them up to compete in the prestigious race with no coach, no university support, but with the drive to win as two ex-high school marathon runners lead the team.

I think the interesting part was reading the minds of the runner and the how each student offered different things to the team. Different characters indeed make up a successful team. They grow through training, overcoming the arduous road to make it to the prestigious Hakone Ekiden.

Didn’t quite get it at the start, but then couldn’t put the book down. Pity there is no translation.

This is being made into a movie in Japan as well.

Angela Aries & Dominque Debney: Facon de Parler!

Parlez-vous Francais?

French for Beginners, 2nd Edition – I think I used this when I went to an adult education course way back when.

French is a difficult language for me as they spell things as pronounced!  But if you want to start somewhere, I have a book for you and of course the essential tapes that come with it.

But the problem could be – does anyone have a cassette player these days???

Jennifer Donnelly: A Gathering Light

I like American novels.  I especially like the ones set outside the big cities, in a small town I have never visited which makes me feel like I have traveled to a faraway world I don’t know at all.

I remember this book was so engaging I couldn’t put the book down.

The reader engages with the fictional character in the book, but in this book, the main character Mattie engages with girl found drowned in the lake, through the letters this girl wrote which Mattie discovers.

So as a reader, you are engaging with a second character through a character – if you see what I mean – which makes it so interesting because you feel like you are looking at the world through someone else’s mind.

Natsuo Kirino: Out

She is my favourite Japanese author.  Her stories are nowhere near happy, usually gruesome but she describes female psychology extremely well with every detail changed for each character and the clash of these different characters in very odd ways is usually the strange mix that makes her books so engaging.

Strangely enough, I was introduced to this author through my Italian friend!  It is translated in German as well I think.

If you have never read a book by a Japanese author, I would recommend you to try her books.  But if you’re not into stories involving cutting up dead bodies do avoid this one,　and go for the more moderate ones.  This is no happy story.  Sorry I only have this in Japanese on my bookshelf…

Edward P. Jones: The Known World

This is one of those I have to re-read because I can’t remember the content very well or somehow didn’t get to the end.  I am going to put this on my summer reading list!

I always find the story related to slavery disturbing and horrifying but somehow feel the need to know and that’s what compels me to read these books.

This is the description from Amazon:

Masterful, Pulitzer-prize winning literary epic about the painful and complex realities of slave life on a Southern plantation. An utterly original exploration of race, trust and the cruel truths of human nature, this is a landmark in modern American literature. Henry Townsend, a black farmer, boot maker, and former slave, becomes proprietor of his own plantation — as well as his own slaves. When he dies, his widow, Caldonia, succumbs to profound grief, and things begin to fall apart: slaves take to escaping under the cover of night, and families who had once found love beneath the weight of slavery begin to betray one another. Beyond the Townsend household, the known world also unravels: low-paid white patrollers stand watch as slave ‘speculators’ sell free black people into slavery, and rumours of slave rebellions set white families against slaves who have served them for years. An ambitious, luminously written novel that ranges from the past to the present, The Known World seamlessly weaves together the lives of the freed and the enslaved — and allows all of us a deeper understanding of the enduring multi-dimensional world created by the institution of slavery.