EDF book review, recommendations, etc - the mbillie edition

mbillie1 · #1 11-07-2007, 06:56 PM

As some of you may know, at my current job I have a lot of free time. For the last fifteen work days, I've read a different book each day (or averaged a book a day) and have read 15 books, all of which I was surprisingly pleased with. Here are the reviews and recommendations. I'm going to group these by author where appropriate, it just seems like it makes more sense.

Haruki Murakami
books read: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Kafka on the Shore, Dance Dance Dance, South of the Border, West of the Sun

Murakami is a strange writer. He provides a mixture of pop-culture with dark, almost mystical (and occasionally erotic) storylines. Things happen that couldn't happen in real life, and then other things happen that wouldn't happen in real life. He's very readable despite the length of some of his books. I've come to like his writing very much. Briefly, the four of his books I read.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: this is the easiest of his books to get into, in my opinion. It has a very engaging plot right from the first few chapters. A nice litmus test to see if you might like his writing is to read the first fifty or sixty pages of this book. If you're interested, you'll probably like at least the four books I listed above. The story is complex but flows fairly easily. Not everything is resolved nicely and neatly, which sort of bugged me, but still a worthwhile book. It's a bit on the long side, the longest of the four I'm recommending, but it's the one I read first and it really got me into him.

Kafka on the Shore: this is in my opinion probably the "best" of the four books. The story is very smooth, powerful and the fantastic/dreamlike/unreal elements flow together with the rest of the plot. A little more on the serene side, although not without its erotic/gorey bits. When I re-read these at some point, this will be the one I start with. An excellent book.

Dance Dance Dance: probably the least interesting of the four, but still rather interesting. A hotel, sometimes the elevator takes you to another world with a sheepman (sounds corny but actually works very well), a bit more conspiracy-ish (although there's no tacit conspiracy) and a little darker than the other books. Still thoroughly enjoyed it.

South of the Border, West of the Sun: my personal favorite of the four, also the shortest for those of you who don't want to jump into a very long book right away. It has little or none of the mysticism/dreamlike stuff that is sort of characteristic of Murakami and for that reason may not be a terrific introduction to his writing, but I think it's very personal (or at any rate I found that I could relate to it myself personally at least) and the most beautifully written of the four. More directly about a girl (three women actually) than the others, not a love story though. If you have read and enjoyed anything else of his, this one is a must-read. Hard to compare him to other writers, at least that I've read, because he's very different from the usual stuff I read, but I have really come to like his writing. I'll be getting some more of his books shortly.

Jose Saramago
books read: Blindness, Seeing

Saramago is a Pulitzer prize winner. Again a different sort of writer. The most noticeable thing is that he doesn't use quotation marks at all. All of the conversations/dialog in his books is like just inserted into the sentences. You can tell when a different character is speaking because he will capitalize the first letter of the first word of that character's sentence. It's confusing at first, until you realize what's going on. However he is a spectacular writer. I'm going to the bookstore tonight to grab some more of his books actually. He is sometimes credited with being the greatest living fiction writer today, and I would not dispute that. These are really excellent, profound and moving works.

Blindness: one by one, the residents of a city go blind, "white blindness" it's called, where you only see a shade of milky white (instead of the darkness associated with normal blindness). Society descends into chaos and disarray. One woman keeps her sight, the wife of the optometrist who treated the first man to have come down with the blindness. This is both a very dark and brutally cynical book and a sort of uplifting and human story. I'd compare this with Kafka's "The Trial" in mood at times, although the writing is not really anything like Kafka's. It's terrific.

Seeing: not exactly a sequel, but it does refer to some of what happens in Blindness, so I'd recommend reading them in order. A critique of the failings of democracy, sort of, a bit of a modern 1984 feel at times. Not as good as Blindness, but still terrific. Saramago is brilliant, I can't wait to read more of his work.

Gino Segre
book read: Faust in Copenhagen: A Struggle for the Soul of Physics

Faust in Copenhagen: the only book of Segre's that I've read. A nonfiction account of the meetings of physicists that ultimately developed Quantum Mechanics as we know it. It gets into both the scientific and personal human sides of their lives. I'm not elaborating much on it but it's really an excellent read, especially if you're like me in that you're interested in advanced physics but are not a theoretical physicist [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] This makes great down-time reading as it's fairly light and very easy to follow.

OK I know I said 15 books but I just remembered I have to meet my father for dinner in about twenty minutes, so I'll come do the other 7 books when I get back later on tonight.

Also, to whoever recommended Special Topics in Calamity Physics in the other thread, I was actually looking at that the other day in the book store and almost bought it, now I will definitely pick it up, thanks for the rec!

mark