HaikuBoxer: summer wine

Friday, October 16, 2009

summer wine

The sun is glorious today though few birds are left to trill about it. Children dash back and forth, heavy backpacks not slowing them down one bit. Sidewalks littered with splashes of coloured leaves.
Here's a classic. The always underrated Nancy Sinatra, the too-often forgotten Lee Hazelwood.

jeux de mots

Margaret Atwood: Oryx and Crake As one reviewer said, this is indeed The Handmaid's Tale meets Where The Wild Things Are. But too much going on and not enough follow-through for my liking. I am a big reader of dystopian fiction, but this does not reach the heights of Huxley, Orwell or even Jack Womack. Atwood tries hard to be both profound and cute. I'm not a fan of cute.

George Konrad: The Case Worker Twenty years after first reading it, I looked high and low recently for this book, having forgotten both the author's name and title. Konrad was a relatively well-known Hungarian writer in the 60s and 70s chronicling his country's plunge into Soviet tyranny. The narrator here is a case worker who finds himself simply regulating "the traffic of suffering." Bleak but important book. Once known as Hungary's "literary lion", the 76 year old Konrad spent many years in the US but is now alive and well (hopefully) in Budapest.

Ghassan Kanafani: Men in the Sun Kanafani was a Palestinian writer who was killed, with his niece, in a car bomb in 1972. It is unknown which of the many sides killed him. This is a heartbreaking collection, especially the title story. Three men hitch a ride in a water tanker truck to a more prosperous Kuwait, hoping for some semblance of a dignified life. Kanafani saw clearly how the Palestinians are betrayed repeatedly even by those who purport to help. Scorching.

Albert Camus: The Plague Every time I read something from the first half of the 20th century or earlier I am struck by the formality of the writing and the psychological distance between the characters. No wonder there were so many novels of "ideas." Not much emotional confessionalism for that era.

Jane Jacobs: Dark Age Ahead She's the old aunt who doesn't hesitate to tell you how fat you've gotten and how your hair just couldn't look worse. Then she smiles and serves her best biscuits.

Diana Gabaldon: Outlander My daughter made me read this, as well as the second book in the series, Dragonfly in Amber. It's a swashbuckling time-travel tale short on ideas but long on the love story. She just got the third in the mail: Voyager. She's going to force me to read that one too. Resistance is futile.

HaikuBoxer

Friday, October 16, 2009

summer wine

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