I Know I Know I Know

I read All My Puny Sorrows, Miriam Toews' latest book. I had previously read one of her other books, A Complicated Kindness. I don't remember A Complicated Kindness very precisely, but I remember that I had enjoyed my read. I also enjoyed All My Puny Sorrows. "Enjoyed" perhaps isn't the proper word. All My Puny Sorrows is the kind of book that makes you incredibly sad all along your read. There are some funny moments that lighten up the book, though. I found the way it was written to be interesting, especially for the dialogs.

Politicians

Vincent Marissal is the political columnist at La Presse and he is probably my favorite one. I find him to be very neutral and he criticizes all political parties equally. He published a book recently called Nos amis les politiciens (our friends the politicians) in which he did portraits of different politicians he met throughout the years. In his book, I had the impression that he was less neutral than he is in his column. You can sense that he doesn't believe in Quebec independence. He has some funny stories on a lot of politicians. However, I found his book to be somewhat repetitive. When anecdotes involve a few politicians, the story is repeated in each politician's chapter. Of course, this allows the reader to pick up the book and choose which politician he wants to learn more about, without having to read the whole book from beginning to end.

Face aux étoiles

One of my Christmas gifts to F was Enki Bilal's latest, La couleur de l'air (the color of air). It is the last of a trilogy. F later bought the first book, Animal'z. I had already read it before, and I reread it after reading La couleur de l'air. I'll start with Animal'z.

The title of the book is related to a few of the characters who can hybridate themselves with animals using packs of some sort. The technology is the product of Ferdinand Owles' research, one of many characters who are all attempting to find safe haven after a planetary event, the "coup de sang" (blood hit). The hybrids aren't the most interesting characters, though: there is a guy who says mostly interesting quotes from famous people who is involved in some kind of duel and there are also cannibals.

La couleur de l'air reunites the reader with characters from the first two books from the trilogy, Animal'z and Julia et Roem, and new characters appear as well. Since I read La couleur de l'air first and had read Animal'z a while ago, I didn't remember the characters from the first book too well. The end ofthe trilogy is pretty surprising and sends a powerful environmental message. I read a review that said the characters lacked emotion, but I believe it is because they are all on a survival mode.

Bilal's drawings, as usual, are very anatomical, and he still uses a lot of blue. At some points in the third book, there are more colors, and those moments are pretty striking. I will be getting the missing second book soon.

Knights of Cydonia

I finally finished the whole Dragonball series. It was a very satisfying read. I had mostly read the earlier volumes as a child and I was afraid that the series would get less funny once Sangoku would start fighting aliens, but that didn't happen. I think Sangoku is a great childhood hero. He always goes further in his training, and he makes you want to take up martial arts. My favorite characters aside from him are Tenshinhan, Piccolo and Vegeta. I like characters who have been enemies before becoming allies. The last arc is a bit ridiculous, and it is sometimes tiring to see the characters rely so heavily on the Dragon Balls, the senzus and new incredible levels of training, but all in all, I had a really great time reading these books.

Help Myself (Nous Ne Faisons Que Passer)

I've just finished reading Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway, and I am a bit puzzled by this book. The beginning is absolutely beautiful, but the party scene at the end is so boring. Perhaps it's meant to be that way. Anyway, it is really lovely to be walking among the streets of London at the beginning of the novel with all of the different characters, whose thoughts are all fascinating to follow. I found Rezia's character very touching, and I loved Peter Walsh and Septimus.

Way Down In The Hole

(These lists are in alphabetical order by authors' last names.)

Books I am buying this year:

Mansfield Park - Jane Austen

Hollywood - Charles Bukowski

The Perks of Being a Wallflower - Stephen Chbosky

Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

The Beautiful and the Damned - F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Last Tycoon - F. Scott Fitzgerald

A Long Way Down - Nick Hornby

The Lottery: And Other Stories - Shirley Jackson

The Subterraneans - Jack Kerouac

Reading Lolita in Teheran: A Memoir in Books - Azar Nafisi

The Jungle - Upton Sinclair

Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson

A Room of One's Own - Virginia Woolf

Orlando - Virginia Woolf

Books I am borrowing at the library sometime this year:

Tuesdays with Morrie - Mitch Albom

Catch-22 - Joseph Heller

Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (must finish that one)

If any of you remember the other lists of books I made at the beginning and in the summer of last year, you'll notice that a lot of the books in this list have already been mentioned previously. I really haven't read a lot of the books in those previous lists.

Biological

Recently read Yann Martel's latest book, Beatrice & Virgil, and it was great!

Recently saw French movie De battre mon coeur s'est arrêté and it was beautiful!

Recently went to La Banquise and had a novelty poutine (fries, cheese, BBQ sauce, sour cream, guacamole and tomatoes) and it was delicious!

Sorry, feel more or less like blogging these days.

Take It Or Leave It

I'm pretty much done with classes, so it's back to Having A Lot Of Time To Read time. For a long time, I tried to find the edition of Salinger's Nine Stories that I wanted, but I finally gave in and bought a different edition. I wanted to reread it before tackling the only Salinger I hadn't read yet,Raise High The Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction. (I bought it last summer in Vancouver: it has been sitting on a shelf ever since.)

My rereading of Nine Stories was unsatisfying. Understanding those stories correctly would require me to read exterior analyses of them. I'll probably do that sooner or later, but I wish I didn't have to.

Raise High The Roof Beam, Carpenters was more satisfying. It is the detailed story of Seymour Glass' wedding day. It is often very funny. With this story, I decided Buddy Glass was my favorite of the Glass children. (Zooey is not bad either, and Boo Boo is cool, too.)

Unfortunately, I was very bored with the beginning of Seymour: An Introduction. The narrator goes on and on about very abstract ideas. I eventually realized that the narrator was actually Buddy Glass, whom I had previously been proud to proclaim my favorite Glass child. The story got better, though. It became a detailed portrait of Seymour Glass, Buddy's older brother. Seymour Glass annoys the hell out of me, though. But it is endearing to see how much his brothers and sisters love him. It is equally endearing how Buddy always doubts what he is writing.

I have now come to the conclusion that my appreciation of Salinger's work, from my favorite to my least favorite, goes like this: Franny and Zooey, Raise High The Roof Beam, Carpenters, Seymour: An Introduction, and Nine Stories. The Catcher In The Rye goes into another category entirely, the category of Books I Have A Love-Hate Relationship With. It probably stands alone in its category, actually.

(I have to mention, though, that the stories in Nine Stories are still all enjoyable. I tried to rank them from my favorite to my least favorite, and I realized that I actually kind of like them all. I usually like either the beginning or the end of the story only, though. I like the beginnings of "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" and of "Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut". "Just Before the War with the Eskimos", "The Laughing Man" and "Down at the Dinghy" are terrific stories. I liked the end of "For Esmé - with Love and Squalor". I didn't like the end of "Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes." I didn't like the beginning of "De Daudier-Smith's Blue Period", but its end is terrific. "Teddy" is an interesting story.)

The edition of "Nine Stories" that I wanted is pictured below.

Come Here

Whoo! Lots of catching up to do. Recently, I went to a fancy restaurant, I read The English Patient, I saw The Informant!, a cute French romantic comedy, and Hable con ella. So skip ahead to any passage that might interest you.

The restaurant: I went to Europea, the kind of restaurant that gives you tiny portions in enormous plates, but they gave us plenty of freebies in between the apetizer and the entrée, so it was fine. Actually, there were so many freebies that I just couldn't wait to get my entrée. First, we had to choose between olive bread, white bread and parmesan bread. I had olive bread, which was delicious. They also gave us breadsticks with olive oil. Next we had a parmesan and goat cheese chip shaped into a lollipop: our first freebie. The next freebie was a lobster capuccino with truffles: delicious. I had foie gras as an apetizer, then another freebie came along: it was some sort of eggnog with truffle pieces in it. It was kind of weird. Then we had an apple sherbet with ice cider to clean our palate: it was great. My entrée was scallops and crawfish on a risotto bed. There wasn't mushc risotto, though, so I was kind of disappointed. Then came a shitload of desserts. We had lime sherbet with white chocolate, which was really great. Then they gave us cotton candy (?!) and madeleines, which we could bring home. Then I finally got the dessert I had actually ordered, which was chocolate cake with thyme sherbet: it was great. To conclude, they gave us pound cakes which we could also take home. The service was kind of weird at that restaurant. All in all, I don't think I would go back there.

The English Patient: As much as I hated the movie, I loved the book. What the movie did for me, though, was that it allowed me to imagine Juliette Binoche each time Hana's character was mentioned, which isn't a bad thing at all. The book was really sensuous and was a lot more linear than the movie. It allowed me to understand the importance of Kip and Hana's story, which seemed totally irrelevant to me while I was watching the movie.

The Informant!: It was kind of a complicated movie to understand, what with its story concerning corporate crime and all. It was funny at times, though.

Prête-moi ta main: If this movie had been made in the United States, it would have been totally unwatchable. The French accent, however, can make up for anything.

Hable con ella: I have seen four Almodovar movies: La Mala Educacion, Volver, Todo sobre mi madre and Hable con ella. My favorite one was La Mala Educacion, then Todo sobre mi madre, then Hable con ella. Hable con ella is still a terrific movie, though. It is beautiful, as all Almodovar movies. That guy really knows how to tell a story. I found this movie particularly sad.

After Hours

Books: Read Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer, it was great. Horrors of war, once more. I loved the description of Brod's character, and a lot of other things, including the meaning of the book's title.

Movies: Saw The Fountainhead, Gary Cooper is weirdly handsome as Howard Roark; Patricia Neal is not how I pictured Dominique Francon, but she is also weirdly beautiful; I enjoyed Raymond Massey's portrayal of Gail Wynand the most; one of the greatest things about this movie is that it is old and black-and-white, so, not much there; I don't think the movie makes much sense to anyone who hasn't read the book, oh but how I love the book, I reread it recently and all along I was going ohmygodIlovethisbook.

Saw The English Patient, so horrible, I don't understand how it got so many Oscar nominations, both of the characters of the love story are utterly unlikable.

Saw Ne le dis à personne, a terrific French thriller directed by Guillaume Canet, I guess the boy's got brains too.

Saw Up in the Air, it had some good moments; Vera Farmiga's character is really hot; a good reflection on unemployment; it is scary how somebody can get to the point where George Clooney's character has, i.e. with no connection to anybody whatsoever.

Saw Inglourious Basterds, it was okay, but I wasn't blown away by it or anything.

Music: Have bought The XX album from iTunes recently, not exactly breaking news in the indie world here, but I like them a lot.

Places: Went back to Laloux, one of my favorite restaurants, before it changed chefs; perhaps I mentioned this restaurant before; the servings are usually very small, and it is always frustrating because the dishes are both always expensive and delicious; this time, perhaps because they are changing chefs, the servings were a bit more generous; I had a delicious plate of lamb with a tajine of carrots.

Went to a fancy Vietnamese restaurant, it was excellent, had imperial rolls, a Tom Yum soup, chicken sautéed with vegetables, and a very original dessert: chocomaki, a dessert resembling sushi with sweetened rice replacing the rice, fruit replacing the raw fish, and chocolate sauce replacing the soya sauce, all along with some coconut ice cream.

Real life: Arrived to L.A., it was weird, I kept thinking about all the broken dreams that must go down there; went to Santa Monica, a nice little shopping neighborhood; went to Venice Beach, didn't stay very long; drove down Rodeo Drive, a fancy shopping street; visited the Vietnamese mall in Santa Ana; went to a Vietnamese vegeterian restaurant, it was weird.

Drove from L.A. to San Francisco, the road was really nice, desert-like; San Francisco is pretty beautiful; went to a fancy restaurant called La Folie, had snails, Hawaiian butterfish and a Valhrona and passionfruit bomb; went to Napa Valley and Sonoma, i.e. wine country, it was really beautiful; walked around Fisherman's Wharf; went to a contemporary Vietnamese restaurant, it was so delicious; went to Berkeley; went to Chinatown to eat some dim sum; went to City Lights Bookstore; went to Haight-Ashbury; went to Union Square; saw some Chagalls and Picassos; ate at a great Thai place; went to Stanford.

Come As You Are

I read two other Nick Hornby books recently. The first one is About a Boy. I liked the movie better than the book. (And, as you know, I preferred the written version of High Fidelity to its filmed one.) The end of the book is pretty different from the end of the movie. I liked the bit where Marcus, one of the main protagonists, says that it doesn't really matter who are the people who back you up, as long as they're there.

The other one is The Polysyllabic Spree. It's a collection of essays which Hornby wrote for a magazine. The essays are about the books he reads and buys. He buys a shitload of books, and he makes me want to buy a lot, too. I love to read his views on reading. Reading fills me with despair too, sometimes.

I'm done with Nick Hornby for now. He makes me want to read Dickens... We'll see how that goes.

On an entirely other subject, I also saw The Ugly Truth recently. It was so bad. Katherine Heigl plays an uptight bitch, and Gerard Butler is very disappointing.

Baby, I Love Your Way

I hadn't enjoyed the movie High Fidelity as much as I thought I would. The book, however, is great. I cannot decide whether this is a guy book or whether this is a girly book written by a guy. Apparently, guys worry about a lot of things too. The book is often very funny: the "I haven't seen Reservoir Dogs yet" passage is hilarious. There is a sad moment when the main protagonist is about to finally reacquaint himself physically with his ex, and all he can think about is whether they have protection or not, because she has been with another man. I also like this passage very much: "People worry about kids playing with guns, and teenagers watching violent videos; we are scared that some sort of culture of violence is taking over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands - literally thousands - of songs about broken hearts and rejection and pain and misery and loss."

This Fire

Craig Ferguson's autobiography American on Purpose came out on September 22nd. It is a very enjoyable read, and one can easily recognize Craig's humor throughout the book. Fans of his show have already heard a lot of his stories, but it is still a joy to be reacquainted with them. In the first part, Craig tells us of his childhood in his native unforgiving Scotland and of a few people who have greatly influenced his life, including his parents and his relatives living in New York. It makes one realize that, throughout life, we meet a lot of interesting people who become important to us. Later on, Craig recalls his days of drinking and of moving through the punk and stand-up comedy scenes. This includes his getting acquainted with the women involved in those scenes (man, he was a STUD!). After getting past drinking, Craig then moves on to his incredible journey through the show business world of America. He started with many crap jobs, wrote a novel and a few movies along the way, and ended up getting, against all odds, the position of late night talk show host on CBS. A lot of elements of this read make it highly inspirational, but they can all be summarized with this one sentence from the book: "Between safety and adventure, I choose adventure."

Temptation

I've read Trainspotting and I loved it. The book is pretty different from the movie, as the story does not focus around Renton and involves many other characters. To read this book, you have to be prepared to reading English written in the Scottish accent. I enjoyed reading about the lives of those petty criminals, seeing them deal with depression, learning about their views of the world and finding myself agreeing with them. The book, written by Irvine Welsh, is also really funny at times. 

Wonderful Night

Books I read while I was on my trip:

Between the Bridge and the River by Craig Ferguson: Craig Ferguson is easily my favorite famous person. In my opinion, he is way more than a late-night talk-show host: he is a genuinely smart, decent, and knowledgeable person, and he has exactly the sense of humor I am looking for. Perhaps because I like him so much, I am biased, but I sincerely loved his book. It is a novel with four main characters, and it talks about everything from love and religion to Hollywood. It is a bit confusing at first, but it is worth it. It is a hilarious book and an interesting thought pops out every two lines.

White Teeth by Zadie Smith: This book was really hyped up in 2000. I couldn't get past the first part (there are about six parts to this book). It is not that funny nor that interesting. The book is about the lives of some individuals in London, some of them being foreigners.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers: A very contemporary non-fiction book. There were loads of instructions on how to read the book at the beginning of the book. Unfortunately, towards the beginning, the author tells us those instructions are unnecessary. I decided to listen to him. Therefore, I did not understand much of the book. Perhaps I am just not smart enough. The books tells us how the author had to take care of his brother after both their parents died from cancer, while attempting to create a magazine at the same time.

Something

This Side of Paradise was published in 1920. It is F. Scott Fitzgerald's first novel. The main character is Amory Blaine, a handsome young lad who is a passionate man in general, and who is particularly passionate about poetry. He spends the first years of his life very comfortably, for his father does not lack money. His sole company is that of his mother, who is a fascinating woman, to say the least. He then goes to boarding school, where he prepares himself to life in Princeton. Along the way, he makes a few friends and meets a few girls. Towards the end of his studies, Worl War I begins and Amory is enrolled in the army. His military career does not last long, however, and does not seem to have any great impact on him. After the war, he meets the love of his life, only to lose her after a few months. The only thing left for Amory is to try and find his place in the world.

This book is interesting because its main characters, if they truly existed, would probably annoy the hell out of me. The fact that they live in the 1920s, however, seems to make up for it. Also, F. Scott Fitzgerald's descriptions of female characters are simply extraordinary: they all seem like incredibly superficial creatures, yet they remain utterly irresistible...

Feel Good Hit of the Summer

I've decided to write down a definitive reading list for the summer. Perhaps I am being too ambitious. My hope is that I am not ambitious enough. Some of these will take me longer than others... So here it is, more or less in order:

This Side of Paradise - F. Scott Fitzgerald: I am almost done with this one.

Into The Wild - Jon Krakauer

The Dharma Bums - Jack Kerouac

Huis clos - Jean-Paul Sartre

Nouvelles - Guy de Maupassant

Franny and Zooey - J. D. Salinger: This is a re-read.

Saga - Tonino Benacquista: Also a re-read. This is a French book about screenplay writers.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower - Stephen Chbosky: I saw this one in a bookstore at Heathrow and it looks interesting.

Trainspotting - Irvine Welsh

Middlemarch - George Eliot

The Diviners - Margaret Laurence: This was suggested to me by theoreo

Equus - Peter Shaffer

Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius - Dave Eggers: I want to buy this one.

White Teeth - Zadie Smith: I want to buy this one too.

Reasons to Be Cheerful, Part 3

I have just finished reading Songbook by Nick Hornby. Nick Hornby is a rather successful English writer. You know how High Fidelity and About a Boy are movies? Well, they were books before that, and they were written by Nick Hornby. I have seen High Fidelity and I adore About a Boy, but I have yet to read those two books. Songbook is the first Nick Hornby book I have read. 

If you have seen or read High Fidelity, you know how important music is to this author. Songbook is a collection of essays about Nick Hornby's favorite songs. I know very few of the songs he speaks of, but this didn't keep me from enjoying the book. This is because Nick Hornby does not talk about the songs he loves only as pieces of music. What he does instead is he uses these songs to express his point of view on certain issues of life. He does not talk like a musical elitist and succeeds in remaining accessible. As I have said previously, this was my first encounter with Nick Hornby and I rather like his style of writing. Because he is a successful author, I expected his book to be an easy read. Songbook is not a difficult read, but Nick Hornby has a pretty extensive vocabulary and is a really precise writer. I will soon be reading his other books.

Eleanor Rigby

I read Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and found it extremely sad. It was released in 2005. There are three narrators in this book. One is Oskar Schell, a nine-year-old boy. The two others are his grand-parents. I will start with the grand-parents, and move on with Oskar afterwards. 

The three narrators are very different. Thomas Schell and his wife both grew up in Dresden, which is a German city that was bombed by the Allied forces in 1945. Thomas was in fact in love with Anna, his wife's sister, who was killed in the bombings. Because of this, Thomas Schell cannot speak. However, in the passages he narrates, his sentences seem to have no end. Oskar's grandmother's style is different: she likes to put spaces between her sentences. 

Oskar is a pretty special boy. He only wears white, he writes letters to famous people, and he invents things to keep himself from getting sad. Oskar's dad died in the September 11 attacks. Oskar is looking for something he believes will help him get through his grief, and we follow his journey through the city of New York. The city of New York is very important in the book. Oskar has to meet a lot of people on his quest, and he chooses to meet them in alphabetical order instead of doing it geographically, and so his journey seems endless. Plus, he walks everywhere. As I said, Oskar meets a lot of people, and at one point of the story, he thinks of the song "Eleanor Rigby": "All the lonely people. Where do they all come from? And where do they all belong?"

This book made me realize how traumatizing 9/11 must have been for the United States. Apparently, I had never thought about it enough. I was pretty young when it happened, and at that time, all I could think of was that perhaps Americans were exaggerating a bit with their patriotism. I had to read a fiction book to understand that they had really been hurt.

The book is also interesting visually: there are pictures of doorknobs, pages with lots of words written in differents colors as in a stationery store, and pages corrected in red.

Dreams

We've been reading Cane by Jean Toomer in my literature class. There are three parts to this book, the two first parts being a mix of short works of prose and of poems, and the third part being a play. The book, written in 1923, is about black people and their constant struggle with their identity. The first part takes place in the South, the second part in the North and the third part makes us return to the South. It is a very bleak book, very well written. Something worth checking out.