Goodreads România discussion

Nu cred că sunt singurul de aici de pe grup căruia îi plac librăriile, bibliotecile, anticariatele, cafenelele cu rafturi de cărți, vacanțele în care găsești o carte bună lăsată de cineva la hotelul în care stai, întâlnirile întâmplătoare cu cărți noi și vechi.

Așa că vă invit să discutăm despre titlurile care ne atrag atenția într-o astfel de vizită, fie că ajungem să le și cumpărăm sau nu. Cine știe, poate se lasă și cu sugestii pentru Buddy Reads...

Încep eu, cu câteva cărți remarcate pe mesele și rafturile unei librării din Cambridge:

Once Upon a Tome: The Misadventures of a Rare Bookseller de Oliver Darkshire



"Welcome to Sotheran's, one of the oldest bookshops in the world, with its weird and wonderful clientele, suspicious cupboards, unlabelled keys, poisoned books and some things that aren't even books, presided over by one deeply eccentric apprentice."

The Cat Who Saved Books de Sōsuke Natsukawa



"Bookish high school student Rintaro Natsuki is about to close the secondhand bookstore he inherited from his beloved bookworm grandfather. Then, a talking cat named Tiger appears with an unusual request. The feline asks for—or rather, demands—the teenager’s help in saving books with him. The world is full of lonely books left unread and unloved, and Tiger and Rintaro must liberate them from their neglectful owners."

The Twyford Code de Janice Hallett



"It's time to solve the murder of the century...

Forty years ago, Steven Smith found a copy of a famous children's book, its margins full of strange markings and annotations. He took it to his remedial English teacher, Miss Isles, who became convinced it was the key to solving a puzzle. That a message in secret code ran through all Edith Twyford's novels. Then Miss Isles disappeared on a class field trip, and Steven's memory won't allow him to remember what happened. Now, out of prison after a long stretch, Steven decides to investigate the mystery that has haunted him for decades. Was Miss Isles murdered? Was she deluded? Or was she right about the code?

Glory de NoViolet Bulawayo



"Glory centers around the unexpected fall of Old Horse, a long-serving leader of a fictional country, and the drama that follows for a rumbustious nation of animals on the path to true liberation. Inspired by the unexpected fall by coup, in November 2017, of Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe's president of nearly four decades, Bulawayo's bold, vividly imagined novel shows a country imploding, narrated by a chorus of animal voices who unveil the ruthlessness and cold strategy required to uphold the illusion of absolute power, and the imagination and bullet-proof optimism to overthrow it completely."

Bibliomaniac de Robin Ince



"Why play to 12,000 people when you can play to 12? In Autumn 2021, Robin Ince's stadium tour with Professor Brian Cox was postponed due to the pandemic. Rather than do nothing, he decided he would instead go on a tour of over a hundred bookshops, from Wigtown to Penzance; from Swansea to Margate.

Packed with anecdotes and tall tales, Bibliomaniac follows Robin up and down the country in his quest to discover just why he can never have enough books. It is the story of an addiction and a romance, and also of an occasional points failure just outside Oxenholme."

Găsită astăzi într-o cabină telefonică (evident, n-am rezistat și am luat-o cu mine acasă):

The Penguin Dictionary of Quotations, o ediție din 1991



Copiez aici o epigramă:

"What is a communist?
One who hath yearnings
For equal division of unequal earnings"
(Ebenezer Elliott)

O vizită de noapte la Foyles în centrul Londrei...

Din cărțile care mi-au atras atenția:

The Centre de Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi



Anisa Ellahi dreams of being a translator of ‘great works of literature’, but instead mostly spends her days subtitling Bollywood films in her flat in London while living off her parents’ generous allowance and discussing the ‘underside of life’ with her best friend, Naima. Then she meets Adam, who has successfully leveraged his savant-level aptitude for languages into an enviable career. At first, this only adds to her sense of inadequacy, but when Adam learns to speak Urdu with native fluency practically overnight, Anisa forces him to reveal his secret.

Adam tells Anisa about the Centre, an elite, invite-only program that guarantees absolute fluency in any language in just ten days. Sceptical but intrigued, Anisa enrols. Stripped of her belongings and all contact with the outside world, she undergoes the Centre's strange and rigorous processes. But as she enmeshes herself further within the organisation, seduced by all that it’s made possible, she soon realizes the disturbing, hidden cost of its services.

Rental Person Who Does Nothing: A Memoir de Shoji Morimoto



Shoji Morimoto was constantly being told by his boss that he contributed nothing to the company he worked for and that it made no difference whether he showed up or not. He began to wonder whether a person who ‘does nothing’ could still have value and a place in the world. Perhaps he could turn ‘doing nothing’ into a service? With one tweet, Rental Person was born.

In Rental Person Who Does Nothing , Morimoto chronicles his extraordinary experiences in his unique line of work and reflects on how we consider relationships, jobs and family in our search for meaningful connection and purpose in life."

Prophet Song de Paul Lynch



"On a dark, wet evening in Dublin, scientist and mother-of-four Eilish Stack answers her front door to find the GNSB on her step. Two officers from Ireland’s newly formed secret police are here to interrogate her husband, a trade unionist.

Ireland is falling apart. The country is in the grip of a government turning towards tyranny and Eilish can only watch helplessly as the world she knew disappears. When first her husband and then her eldest son vanish, Eilish finds herself caught within the nightmare logic of a collapsing society.

How far will she go to save her family? And what – or who – is she willing to leave behind?"

Tom Lake de Ann Patchett



"Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart. As in all of her novels, Ann Patchett combines compelling narrative artistry with piercing insights into family dynamics. The result is a rich and luminous story, told with profound intelligence and emotional subtlety."

Ghosts in the Hedgerow: A Hedgehog Whodunnit de Tom Moorhouse



"A body lies motionless on the ground. Small, with a snouty head and covered with spines, it is unquestionably dead before its time. And all of those gathered around the corpse are suspect. So which one of them is responsible for this crime - and for the disappearance of many many thousands of hedgehogs in recent decades?"

Moldy Strawberries de Caio Fernando Abreu



"In eighteen exhilarating stories, Caio Fernando Abreu navigates a Brazil transformed by the AIDS epidemic and stifling military dictatorship of the ’80s. Suspended between fear and longing, Abreu’s characters grasp for connection. A man speckled with Carnival glitter crosses a crowded dance floor and seeks the warmth and beauty of another body. A budding office friendship between two young men grows into a “strange and secret harmony.” One man desires another but fears that their complot might crumble with one clumsy word or gesture. Junkies, failed revolutionaries, poets, and conflicted artists face threats at every turn. But, inwardly ferocious and resilient, they heal. For Abreu there is beauty on the horizon, mingled with the light of memory and decay."