Review: Zuleika Dobson, or, an Oxford love story

Zuleika Dobson, or, an Oxford love story by Max Beerbohm
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read that this was an Edwardian novel, and I admit that didn't mean much to be at the time. Now, however, I'm wondering if it means a novel that starts off as a full-fledged Victorian novel, taking itself and its characters much too seriously, and then suddenly does a 180-degree turnaround and spits out something else entirely.

This was rather slow to get into, but I'm glad I stuck with it. Knowing nothing about the novel I was pleasantly surprised at the outcome.

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Review: The British Museum Is Falling Down

The British Museum Is Falling Down by David Lodge
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I had just finished reading "The Library at night" before this book, which also discussed the library at the British Museum, so it was pretty serendipitous that I happened to read this next.

This was a random purchase from the clearance shelf in 2nd and Charles. It turned out to be a cute book. It reminded me of P.G. Wodehouse, although I'm sure that's because it's a cute, comic, novel that takes place in London. The various sections do seem to have different styles, which was apparently on purpose. I'm sure I'm not erudite enough to pick up on them all, but suffice it to say that it was a quick, fun, read about a man's day in mid-60s London.


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Review: A Most Ambiguous Sunday and Other Stories

A Most Ambiguous Sunday and Other Stories by Young-moon Jung
My rating: 0 of 5 stars

Since this is a dnf for me (at least for now), this is my review thus far. I won't give it a rating since I haven't finished it yet.

The first story was excellent. Probably 5 stars. The next two were ok. But it went seriously downhill from there. The other stories reminded me of "A Contrived World", by the same author, which I started and could never finish. I'm not sure if I'll continue this book.

Also, since Goodreads doesn't allow enough space for my personal notes, I am going to write a brief summary of each story here below. This is for my own notes, so it is full of Spoilers.

SPOILERS BELOW!
Mrs. Brown - A Korean lady married an American and they're living somehere in the midwest. A young man shows up to rob their house, and is soon joined by his girlfriend. During the robbery the wife thinks about her married life and realizes she wants a divorce. The robbery ends with the two being caught and taken away. We find out that the lady then divorced her husband and took flying lessons
The Joy of Traveling - The protagonist gives the feeling of a 3rd wheel. He and a girl go on a trip, which was K's idea. K is a bisexual friend of both. Most of the story is each of them reminiscing on meeting up in Europe and life in Korea.
- Another 3rd wheel feeling. A girl and a guy and the protagonist. The girl and guy are cousins, but also hooked up (we find out toward the end). The guy seems to have neurological issues, and seems to be fading a bit. Most of the story is filled with their inane meanderings and thoughts. A man shows up looking for his dog, but they don't take it seriously and make odd remarks.
A way of remembrance - Probably the darkest of all the stories. It seems to be about mosquitoes, or frog, but it turns out the narrator's companion (wife?) was dead when he woke up one morning, so he buried her in their garden and frankly seems to be a bit off. The entire story is the meandering of his (possibly disturbed) mind.
Together with a Chicken - What?? These stories are getting weirder and weirder. A guy hears a rooster, tells his lady friend about it. Then he says he has a habit of taking more and more sleeping pills until he falls asleep. Then he takes us through his drug-addled dream while slowly falling asleep. It involved scenes of nature and animals and some other weird things.
At the Amusement Park - Some guy sneaks into an amusement park that has long since been abandoned. He reminisces about the amusement park and other stuff. He gets on a marry-go-round horse and falls off. He gets on a children's ride of a plane and tries to make it fall but it doesn't....
Animal Song of Boredom of Fury, Part One: The Sound of the Alarm in the Water - Ok, what's happening? These stories are getting weirder and weirder. Some guy is living along the shore and eating fish and berries and reminiscing about his girlfriend and how she killed their two parrots in a fit of rage or something. Then he sees a watch underwater, and a bull on the bridge, and his mind keeps wandering.
Animal Song of Boredom of Fury, Part Two: The Cave Dweller: Ok I might have to dnf this book, or at least take a break. Some guy lives in a cave, reminisces about an ex-gf who played the cello and about his pet rabbit who drowned. He eats sardines and other fish from cans, and then some fisherman gives him a hook, but it doesn't work without bait. But he's able to use a net some catch some fish. Yeah. That's it.

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Review: The Library at Night

The Library at Night by Alberto Manguel
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

If you are a lover of books (and libraries), as I assume many people on this website are, then you will likely love this book.

If you aren't, this will be a dull book where nothing happens.

I finished this book surprisingly quickly. It is chock-full of interesting tidbits and pieces of information about libraries, books, readers, authors, and ancillary topics.

I was surprised to read how certain libraries, like the Library of Congress, have destroyed more books than were destroyed in the burning of the library of Alexandria. Putting them (faultily, it turns out) onto microfiche usually meant destroying the originals. His example of the scanning of the Domesday book and all the time and effort it took (and how it was subsequently unreadable) is very interesting.

Also interesting was how librarians saved books that were headed for the landfill by clandestinely stamping false withdrawal dates on them, thereby making them seem more popular than they were (p. 72)



Some highlighted quotes:
"According to (Richard) Semon, memory is the quality that distinguishes living from dead matter." (p. 203)

"Tradition tells us that words, not light, came first out of the primordial darkness." (p. 269)

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Review: Cesare: Il grande giocatore

Cesare: Il grande giocatore by Antonio Spinosa
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I recently finished a biography of Silla, and in my review I wrote:

"It seems odd to me that his reputation is by and large a pretty bad one, while someone like Julius Caesar, who wanted to remain dictator and ended up being stabbed to death, is so often revered."

Well, now I take it all back.

This isn't my first biography of Caesar (nor my second), but it is probably the best. While it is true that he was stabbed to death, he was able to conquer a much larger area than Silla ever was (in fact, arguably more than Alexander the Great, since it didn't all just disintegrate after his death like Alexander's) . He also went to Britain, Germany, conquered France and Spain, the near East, visited Troy, conquered Egypt, traveled down the Nile with Cleopatra, and then came back and ruled Rome (for a short amount of time anyway). He also managed to win every war he was in, including one against Pompeii, and he wrote many books in the meantime. So, all in all a pretty full life.

This book was excellent in delving into the politics and methods of his decisions and battles. For example, how he provoked Ariovistus's anger as an excuse to declare war on him (he couldn't just declare war without good reason). The story about his kidnapping by pirates in his younger years is always excellent.

If you wish to read a biography of Caesar, this is the best one I've come across. Unfortunately I don't think it is available in Italian (hint hint, I'm available to translate it, Mondadori!)

Some interesting notes:
Caesar was granted the powers to establish a new city of 5,000 people at the foot of the Alps he called Novum Comum (Como). p. 134

The name Caesar was given to his ancestor who fought in the Punic wars (against Hannibal), because he apparently struck down an elephant, and Caesar meant elephant in the Punic language.

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Review: King of Sting: The Story of Australian Conman Peter Foster. An Audible Original

King of Sting: The Story of Australian Conman Peter Foster. An Audible Original by Justin Armsden
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Interesting. I had never heard of this guy, and he apparently caused a lot of damage and is quite notorious in Australia.

I confess it seemed like some parts were left out. For example, for the first scam mentioned (chapter 1), they know that 60% of the money went here, and 30% went there, but they cannot  get it back? I was just thinking that if I had tried to convince someone to give me money for a non-existing business venture and just put the money in my bank account, the police would find the money trail (as apparently they did here) and then arrest me and return the money. How come they couldn't arrest Peter and return this money in this case?

At other points I felt like something was amiss. As in, some of the people who were duped by him. I am assuming they're not telling the whole story and rather than being duped into a legitimate enterprise, they were duped into thinking they would be scamming others along with Peter, or something along those lines. Also, the judge who gave him the ridiculously low bail amount is definitely on the take.

Regardless, an interesting story. I wonder what will happen from this point on.

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Review: No Bad Kids: Toddler Discipline Without Shame

No Bad Kids: Toddler Discipline Without Shame by Janet Lansbury
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I think it would have been a lot more useful had this been a book detailing her concepts and rules, etc., rather than a collection of random Q&A articles. It took me a while to figure out some of the details of her principles, and in fact I still have some questions about them.

Still, I liked certain concepts of treating your child like a regular human being rather than someone to speak baby-talk with. I also liked the idea of finding the root cause and addressing that rather than symptoms (i.e. You are tired right now, which is why you're acting up. We'll go to bed soon), as well as the fact that children are constantly figuring out the world, which means testing limits.

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Review: Soul Mountain

Soul Mountain by Gao Xingjian
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"Reading this chapter is optional, but as you've read it you've read it. "

I'm still not sure what this book was about, and it is a long book to read when not knowing what it's about. Still, I enjoyed most of it. It is full of stories, folk tales, legends, etc. from places (mostly mountainous and rural) around China.

The chapters are divided, with one being in the first person, the next being in the second person, alternating. At some point they switch too, although it caught me off guard.

I enjoyed most of these stories and meanderings. I like to think that they are true stories that were heard, either by the author himself, or by others known to him, around China, depicting a way of life that vanished after the Communist party came into power.

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Review: The Yacoubian Building

The Yacoubian Building by Alaa Al Aswany
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Another excellent find from the 2nd and Charles Free book bin. I confess this is the first piece of Egyptian fiction that I have ever read.
It is the story of the inhabitants of one building, and, as you may imagine, it is a critique of Egyptian society in general, from the good to the extremely bad. There are plenty of uncomfortable sections, and in fact I sort of skipped over one of them. Still, it kept me interested throughout, and I found myself looking up many terms and places that were mentioned.

I also heard that they made a movie based on this book, which I would really like to watch at some point.

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Review: Etruschi: Storia Di Un Popolo Misterioso

Etruschi: Storia Di Un Popolo Misterioso by Eleonora Sandrelli
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Actually not too bad. The annoying boxes always break my flow when reading the main text, but it has some interesting cursory information. I can't give it more than 3 stars since I feel it is basically a long Wikipedia article.

Some of my notes:
They used to call themselves the Rasna or Rasenna
It's odd that the book states they were apparently a very maritime civilization, but none of their cities were along the sea.
The Etruscan written language is very similar to the local written language of Lemnos, which shows at least some Aegean roots.


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Review: Mouse or Rat?: Translation as Negotiation

Mouse or Rat?: Translation as Negotiation by Umberto Eco
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read this for my translation book club (https://www.facebook.com/groups/TranslationBooks/), so here are some discussion points/questions I jotted down for discussion:

I retried his Altavista experiment from Chapter 1:
The works of Shakespeare - Le opere di Shakespeare - Shakespeare's works
Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies - Presidente della Camera dei deputati - President of the Chamber of Deputies
Studies in the logic of Charles Sanders Peirce - Studi nella logica di Charles Sanders Peirce - Studien in der Logik von Charles Sanders Peirce - Studies in the logic of Charles Sanders Peirce

Translation and Reference (Chapter 3)
It was very interesting to see how closely he works with his translators, at least in the languages he mentions (English, French, German, Spanish, Catalan). I wonder if it is the same for all languages. It must be so much work to go over all these points with translators in every language.

Chapter 4:
I liked the anecdote about how he disagreed with his English translator (William Weaver), and so Weaver consulted with Eco's wife in order to get a consensus. And she said Eco was wrong!

5: The idea of double-coding, and how much Eco put in his novels, was intriguing. I'm embarrassed to say I caught none of the ones he mentioned from The Island of the Day Before.

6: I confess this was the most intense chapter for me, so I'm not sure how much was over my head. What did you guys think of it?

7: Was I the only one who didn't read Monterroso novel as Eco did? He gives 2 possible scenarios, but neither of them was how I understood it:
"Cuando despertó, el dinosaurio todavia estaba allì". (When he woke up, the dinosaur was still there).
I understood it to mean that, when the dinosaur woke up, he noticed he was still existing. Did anyone else get that? Would that even make sense in the Spanish version?
Eco said that someone else woke up, and saw that the dinosaur was still there next to him.

8: The discussion on colors reminded me of Guy Deutscher's book "Through the Language Glass", where he discusses how the ancient people didn't seem to have a word for Blue. And in fact, from Eco's discussions it seems like it was an odd color out. I wonder why. I know there's a theory that we have evolved since then to see blue, but apparently that was debunked.

4 stars, but 5 stars if you're a translator because it's pretty much a must-read

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Review: The Birth of Britain

The Birth of Britain by Winston S. Churchill
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Like most people, I imagine, my first impression of this book was "How did he find the time?" (Answer: he wrote it over the course of 20 years), and when I read that he won the Nobel Prize in Literature, I was even more impressed. Quality as well as Quantity!

Well this book has plenty of both. Although at times I felt like I was plodding through an endless number of Henrys, Richards, Yorks (people, the city, the faction), etc., especially during the War of the Roses, this book kept me interested and I can confidently say I learned a great deal (except maybe about the War of the Roses. I'm still confused about that). I found the early history to be the most fascinating, clear through the Norman conquest.

In other words, aside from having been written by a famous person, and even though it is currently over 60 years old, this book really holds its own.


4.5 stars

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Review: The Girl Who Reads on the Métro

The Girl Who Reads on the Métro by Christine Féret-Fleury
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I must admit that the reason I didn't enjoy this book very much might be party due to my biases. I get excited when I read a book about books, since I tend to like books. However, I usually expect it to be overly erudite and somewhat book-snobbish. And usually it is. After all, if it is about books it will tend to name-drop plenty of them.

Now, this book did plenty of name dropping, but the story itself just seemed to have no substance.

There were way too many deus ex machina moments, and at times it seemed so overly simplified as to be a children's book (every single person she sees in the metro is tied to the random library she randomly decides to walk into?).

It was much too rooted in reality to be magical realism, but much too random and unconvincing to be realistic, and none of it really convinced me.


2.5 stars

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