Review: Papyrus: The Invention of Books in the Ancient World

Papyrus: The Invention of Books in the Ancient World by Irene Vallejo
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

There is nothing to really complain about with this book, but there's nothing to be excited about really either. This is not a history of Papyrus, nor is it necessarily about the invention of books (although that is covered, and I found it very interesting). This is more a journey through various topics the author finds interesting. The topics are indeed interesting, and they tie into paper, or writing, in some form or another. But they are chosen by the author for no apparent objective reason.

Conspicuously missing was the entire Asian continent. Indeed, anything East of the Levant. It would've been fascinating to read about how the Chinese used bamboo and silk for writing (and how these influenced the way Chinese characters could be carved, and therefore how they look).

Not to mention the fact that China lays claim to the invention of paper. It seems that might have been worthy of a mention.

The author also mentions the book as a major improvement to the scroll, but no mention of the accordion style used by Buddhist monks long before this.

It also would've been interesting to read about independent writing inventions and how they differed with/without paper, as in with the Americas.


Regardless, obviously it's not exhaustive, but just a collection of thoughts.



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Review: How to Read and Why

How to Read and Why by Harold Bloom
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As soon as I started this book I thought it would be a pompous look into old-fashioned "elite" Western literature. And it many ways it is. But this doesn't make it any less fascinating. It's great to take a journey through some excellent writing, passing rather quickly from one to the next, along with some background for each.

I'm not sure I'd call this "How to read and why". Maybe "What the author enjoys and why" would be more apt. There is plenty of literature he doesn't touch upon. He seems fine with works in translation (like Dante, Borges and Cervantes), but doesn't venture into Asia, Africa, or the Middle East.

Still, an interesting read.


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Review: The Museum of Ordinary People

The Museum of Ordinary People by Mike Gayle
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A nice read. I fully expected it to be trite and predictable, but it turned out to be a pleasant surprise and a nice and engaging story. I'm glad I read it.



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Review: Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop

Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop by Hwang Bo-Reum
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This book checked quite a few boxes for me:
- A book about a bookshop
- Contemporary Korean novel
- A story about reading/writing

But unfortunately at the end of the day it didn't really do much for me. I found the storyline more or less predictable, and there were no real big twists/turns/revelations. I'm not saying there should have been, but just that it didn't really do much for me.


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Review: I miei giorni alla libreria Morisaki

I miei giorni alla libreria Morisaki by Satoshi Yagisawa
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A very cute book. Reminiscent of Hiromi Kawakami or Toshikazu Kawaguchi, but more of a classical storyline in a way. This was actually a collection of 3 stories, which are chronological and all tie together. I preferred the initial story, but all of it held its own. 

And now I noted down two places I must visit next time I go to Tokyo: the bookshop area of Tokyo, as well as Mitake, in the mountains outside the city. 

Also, this is the third or fourth Japanese book I read that was translated by Gala Maria Follaco, and I must say I really like her style. Everything sounded very natural in Italian, with turns of phrase that seem to fit in perfectly. 

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Review: BATTAGLIE D'AMORE IN SOGNO

BATTAGLIE D'AMORE IN SOGNO by unknown author
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Great little mystery novel taking place in Lugano (and which makes me want to visit the library in Salita dei Frati) involving the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. What's not to love? 

This mystery deals more with the origin of the book than the content (like The Rule of Four), and in fact it credits a different author than the Rule of Four. A great short read. 

Also, for some reason Goodreads says "unknown author". The Author is Giovanna Lepori (not sure how to change it on Goodreads). 

4.5 Stars. 

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Review: The Reading List

The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Another book by an author who loves authors and thinks reading books is everyone's salvation. 

Since I pretty much agree with all those points of view as well, I thought I'd check it out. And it turns out I'm very glad I did. The different feelings/points of view the characters have toward books pretty much run the gamut of what we see in the real world. The story seemed to take a while to get going, but was worth it. 

I'll be following this author for future works. 

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Review: The Great Passage

The Great Passage by Shion Miura
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

What a delightful book. I admit, I had this on my wishlist, but couldn't remember why, and, had I looked into the subject matter I may have skipped this. The idea of an entire novel centered around creating a dictionary seems a tad boring, quite frankly. 

But it turns out this was really nice. Each chapter is from the point of view of someone different, and every person seems to be a bit quirky in their own way, and it all fits in together nicely at the end. 

In terms of the translation, obviously a choice had to be made. Many references are made to Japanese terms, the definitions and the etymology, as well as expressions that, for one reason or another, are odd and need explaining. The translator could have decided to find equivalents in English (or as close to an equivalent as possible), or to stick with the Japanese terms and add explanations for the reader. I think the choice to stick with the original Japanese worked quite well. My Japanese isn't good enough to know any of the words, but I enjoyed the explanations and nuances. 

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Review: The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep

The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep by H.G. Parry
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Right away I loved the idea of this book, and I started wondering about which characters I would like to bring out of books. Here are a few I settled on: 

Lady Sarashina, Charlotte Bronte (at least from my reading of Barker's "The Brontes), and Arnold Rothstein. In terms of fictional characters, Ludo (the kid from Helen Dewitt's The Last Samurai"), and Paloma, from "The Elegance of the Hedgehog". 

I'm sure there are others. Also, I would just like to talk to them and get an idea as to how they would act and react in my every day life. Not sure about going all (REDACTED DUE TO SPOILERS) and using them to my own ends. 

Anyway, having said that, this book was pretty quick-paced from the beginning. I confess I could do without some of the narrator's whining and prevaricating and doubting himself, etc., although  I understand that was part of the point. 

I look forward to reading more by this author. 

4.5 stars

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Review: The Library Book

The Library Book by Susan Orlean
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I had no idea what this was about at first, and kept thinking the history of the library was background for the story. Regardless, although it gets slow at points, much of it was fascinating. It made me very interested in libraries in general. 

I think my only issue was a sort of lack of closure with regards to the library fire, but there's not much the author could do about that. 

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Review: Non sperate di liberarvi dei libri

Non sperate di liberarvi dei libri by Umberto Eco
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

An excellent collection of essays regarding books (and movies) by Umberto Eco and Jean-Claude Carriere. The Italian version seems to have been translated from French. Another reviewer said this is "perfect between-book fodder", and I agree wholeheartedly. 

I enjoyed the section that repeated the argument from Foucault's Pendulum re: all humans being either cretins, fools, morons or lunatics. Although his example for the fool wasn't Murat, but Chateaubriand, saying of Napoleon: "He won all his battles, but aside from this there was nothing that made him a good general". 

Some of my notes:

We always think the new technology is here to stay while the old (books) will die out. But you can simply pick up a book from 1498 and read what it says, depending on the font and the spelling mistakes. But if you have a cassette from 30 years ago, a VHS from 20 years ago, or even a DVD from 10 years ago, you probably can't play it without acquiring the right machinery. 

Reading certain books might not always be worth it, since then you have to have an opinion (and defend it). Someone who reads Shakespeare now will have a very different experience as compared to someone who read it right when it was published. 

Just as Cervantes likely influenced Kafka, so Kafka influences Cervantes, in that people today read one knowing of the other. 

Collecting books is basically "masturbatory" (sic). No one else will share your exact preferences. People might come to admire your art collection. Much less so your collection of books. This is why most collections are then donated once the owner dies. 

We book collectors don't have to worry about thieves. We are protected by their ignorance. 

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Review: The Abbey Library of Saint Gall. The history, the Baroque hall and the collections of the Abbey Library.

The Abbey Library of Saint Gall. The history, the Baroque hall and the collections of the Abbey Library. by Ernst Tremp
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'm literally reading this in order to plan future trips to the Abbey. I've been there twice, but always felt like I was missing quite a bit (although I love wearing those slippers) of this important abbey in Swiss and European history. 

It's too bad that much of what is discussed here isn't open to the public.

Having said that, here are some of my notes for future travels:

Monastery plan (ms. 1091) is the oldest medieval building plan in Europe that is still intact

St. Wiborada is the patron saint of libraries (she removed the books to an island on Lake Costance to save them from the Hungarians)

www.cesg.unifr.ch has digital recordings of selected codices. 

Behind the door on the South side of the hall there is a hidden staircase leading to the gallery and the Manuscript room

The two cocks (near bookcases KK and TT) may be the trademark of the Gigl brothers (Güggel means cock in Swiss german). 

The oldest extant translation of the Gospels by St. Jerome (410/420 AD) exists in fragments

Tuotilo is the first known artist in what is now Switzerland. He designed some book covers for Charlemagne (in this collection)

The satirical verse of St. Gall was written "to test the quill"

The oldest wholly preserved music manuscript in the world: The St. Gall "Cantatorium", produced at the Abbey ca 920/930. 

The world's last surviving example of the Oracula Sibyllina, printed between 1461 and 1465. 

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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: 36 Books That Changed the World

36 Books That Changed the World by Andrew R. Wilson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Great ideas may be executed poorly in many ways. For example, someone may wish to compile a list of what Tyler Cowen called "Quake books" (books that shake your foundation), but then decide only to search for lectures that already exist and simply aggregate them, so the result feels disjointed and often references other lectures that aren't part of the course.

This may also result in incomplete lectures. For example, Aristotle's section might cover just a very small portion of his Nicomachean Ethics, and the St. Augustine section may talk mainly about how St. Augustine influenced later thinkers, rather than his material per se.

Or the books might be compiled by someone who quite obviously is from the US, so the collection is very US-centric (or possibly just western-centric), and there might be just 5 non-western books (Gilgamesh, Art of War, Analects by Confucius, Baghavad Ghita and the Koran).

But many things can be done right as well, and it can introduce you to works you knew nothing about (and usually felt like you should). This happened for me with Tocqueville's Democracy in America and Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. Or even to works you hadn't heard of before (Denis Diderot's & Jean le Rond d'Alembert's The Encyclopedie, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich)

This collection does all of the above. Overall it has more good points than bad, but I would have appreciated maybe one of the 4 Chinese classics, the Tale of Genji, or maybe Arabian Nights.

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Good Night, Mr. Wodehouse by Faith Sullivan

Good Night, Mr. Wodehouse by Faith  Sullivan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Probably minor spoilers ahead:
Not really the book I expected. I figured a book about a booker lover in small-town Minnesota would be a light read. This book is serious, with some quite depressing moments (especially the outhouse), but without being too heavy, which is an accomplishment in itself I guess. Nell's escapes into Wodehouse novels are very relatable for any reader. All in all I'm very happy I came across this book. I hear there are other novels by the same author that take place in the same town, with many of the same characters. I might have to check them out. 4.5 stars.


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The Club Dumas by Arturo Pérez-Reverte, Sonia Soto (Translation)

The Club Dumas by Arturo Pérez-Reverte
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Some of it was rough around the edges, and I had some issues with the whole ending/denouement, but all in all it was a satisfying read.

I liked many of the asides and quotes, such as the one about Marquis de Paulmy and the Comte d'Artois. Or the discussion about why Death carries a scythe while the devil has a pitchfork:
"Because Death reaps, but the Devil harvests"

Also, this introduction happened at the party, which made me happy: "Look who's arrived. You know him, don't you? Professor of Semiotics in Bologna..."

3.5 stars





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