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Diane Z 2024 TBR Takedown
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Mod
5/5 stars
I can see why this book won the Nobel Prize in Literature, it was fantastic. I didn’t think I was going to enjoy a book about the dictator of the Dominican Republic but I did.
The book is told in two storylines; one from Urania’s point of view, the daughter of the former President of the Senate who left the country and has returned after many years. The second viewpoint is from the trujillistas, those closest to the dictator. The book shifts from past to present often which took me a while to appreciate. The dictator is assassinated halfway through the book and I thought what is going to happen next? But the second half of the book was my favorite. The assassination is told from multiple viewpoints and I couldn’t put the book down as I wanted to read more. It was a very gripping story. I also really enjoyed Urania’s story but hers was more heartbreaking. Some of the torture scenes were hard to read but overall a great story of a terrible regime.
“Congress would pass a law establishing that all priests who exercised their ministry in the country had to be Dominicans by birth. Foreigners or naturalized citizens would be returned to their own countries. In this way -the colonel consulted a notebook- the Catholic clergy would be reduced by a third. The minority of native-born priests would be manageable.” “That’s what Fidel Castro did in Cuba.”
“It was his first concession, his first defeat at the hands of that master manipulator of innocents, fools, and imbeciles, that astute exploiter of men’s vanity, greed, and stupidity.”
Mod
5 stars
I really enjoy Ishiguro’s writing. This is the second book by the author that I have read and I really enjoyed it. The story itself is really unique which is what gave it the 5th star for me. I learned a new vocabulary and these simple words now have new meaning: donations, carer, possibles, guardian, modeled and completed. I had watched the movie years ago so I knew the main plot twist and I wish the movie would not put it in the description. I am looking forward to a re-watch also. Ishiguro has 3 more books on the list and I am looking forward to all of them.
Mod
3 stars
I appreciated the ease in which I could read this book, there was no fussiness about it. The title should be Max Havelaar as the story is entirely about him. I wish there was more information about coffee. I think it was an eye opening book about the atrocities of colonialism in Java.
In sum, keeping the oath "to protect the native population against extortion and enslavement" is all-nigh impossible.
Mod
5 stars
“Prose like that is beyond most writers. Your writing has the living, breathing force of something natural flowing through it.” A quote from the book but it is exactly what I feel about Murakami's writing.
I enjoyed my journey yet again in one of Murakami's beautiful books. As always he takes me for a ride. The book is about a relationship between Sumire who falls in love with Mui and is friends with an unnamed teacher. What starts as a love story quickly turns into something else as only Murakami can do.
Sadly this is my last book by the author on the list. I look forward to making time for his other books.
Mod
3 stars
This is my fourth book by the author that I have read but unfortunately it is my least favorite. This book won The PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 1994.
“It’s too ridiculous to take seriously and too serious to be ridiculous.”
The first 25% of the book I really enjoyed by then it went off the rails for me. The ending chapter at least explained to me what the author was trying to do but I just didn’t get it.
Mod
3 stars
This is my 5th book by the author and my final book on the list.
On the first pages we learn that Joe Trace has shot his eighteen year old girlfriend to death. At the funeral, Joe’s wife, Violet, attacks the girl’s corpse. Joe is obsessed with the girl and Violet too. The book tells the past stories of our three main characters. The book is not linear and floats back in forth in time. I did not enjoy this book as much as I have her other books but I still like the author’s writing.
“He thinks about her all the time. Nothing on his mind but her. Won’t work. Can’t sleep. Grieves all day, all night…”
“…Can’t rival the dead for love. Lose every time.”
“Violet agrees that it must be so; not only is she losing Joe to a dead girl, but she wonders if she isn’t falling in love with her too.”
Mod
3 stars
This book described as a memoir and is inspired by actual events but it is a work of fiction.“Maron reconstructs their lives from fragments of memory and a forgotten box of letters”.
“It’s focal point is memory and how one can erase or alter it in order to give a more optimistic view of life.”
I felt like this was a book more about the relationship of mother and daughter. The book was also about religion especially during WWII, and communism. I think I would have enjoyed the book more if it was an autobiography and not a fictionalized version of one.
Mod
3/5 stars
From the book jacket, “…is the fever-pitched tale of a drifter who stumbles into a job, into an erotic obsession, and into a murder.”
Cain is described as “Master of the noir novel”. This is his first novel. Someone commented that it read like a screen play and I would agree.
Maybe I am too logical but I had trouble believing in the reasons for the murders. The two did not want to steal a car because that’s larceny but they had no problems with murder?
The title of this book is quite famous and by the end of the book I still didn’t know what it meant so I asked Google.
The title “The Postman Always Rings Twice” symbolizes the inevitable delivery of justice or retribution, reinforcing the theme of crime and punishment."
Mod
4/5 stars
My second book by this author. I continue my love affair with all things India. I listened to the audiobook read by Vikas Adam, I very much enjoyed the proper pronunciation of Indian names and places. The book takes place during British rule. The story is about the complicated relationship of Dr. Aziz, Mr. Fielding, Mrs. Moore and Miss Quested. I enjoyed getting to know all these characters and I had great sympathy for Dr. Aziz. I have two more books on the list by this author and I look forward to them.
“Like most Orientals, Aziz overrated hospitality, mistaking it for intimacy, and not seeing that it is tainted with the sense of possession.”
Mod
3/5 stars
I have read three other books by this author which I enjoyed. In the Forest was inspired by true events and has a male protagonist. Michen O’Kane loses his mother, spins out of control and is sent to a juvenile detention center at the age of ten where abuse happens. I had such sympathy for this young boy. As Michen ages and becomes an adult I started losing interest in the story. Michen says that jail made him a man and a monster. As the story unfolds we learn that Michen has mental health issues; assuming schizophrenia since he hears voices that are not there and sees things that are not there. I don’t think the mental health portion of the story was handled well. This is my least favorite book by this author.
“It is the wood talking to him, the trees thicker now, the trees where he hid and where his mother came and found him, the spot where he kept old cushions, the mass of cover dark even in daylight.”
“Darkness is drawn to light, but light does not know it; light must absorb the darkness and therefore meet its own extinguishment.”
This is my last book by this author for the list.
Mod
3/5 stars
Herman Hesse is a German-born Swiss writer who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1946. My husband remembers reading this book in high school but I do not. Siddhartha is a novel about the search for self-knowledge.
“Siddhartha had one single goal - to become empty, to become empty of thirst, desire, dreams, pleasure and sorrow - to let the Self die.”
“You are like me; you are different from other people. You are Kamala and no one else, and within you there is a stillness and sanctuary to which you can retreat at any time and be yourself, just as I can. Few people have that capacity and yet everyone could have it.”
Mod
3 stars
Winner of the Man Booker Prize.
The story is told in three time periods: 1983, 1986 and 1987. Our protagonist is Nick Guest, a gay man, twenty-one years of age, just graduated from Oxford University. We watch Nick navigate life in the Margaret Thatcher years in the United Kingdom.
Sometimes a book is all about the journey and not the destination and this is that kind of book. My interest in this journey waxed and waned; there were times I was very interested in the story and there were times I was bored.
There is a mini series of this book and the story transferred quite well to the screen. I enjoyed the story in visual form much more.
I appreciated the novel and author by focusing on a gay main character. I think there is more mention of doing a line of cocaine than sex.
“It seemed as natural as day to him to dress up the pet lamb as the scapegoat.”
“The double curve was Hogarth’s “line of beauty,” the snakelike flicker of an instinct, of two compulsions had in one unfolding movement.”
1. Sputnik Sweetheart by Murakami 229 pages2. Chess Story by Zweig, Stefan 104 pages
3. Passage to India by E.M. Forster376 pages (movie)4. Possessing the Secret of Joy by Alice Walker 288 pages
5. The Sea by John Banville (195 pages) movie
6. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (389 pages)
7. Max Havelaar; or The Coffee Sales of the Netherlands Trading Company by Multatuli 352 pages8. Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter (350 pages)
9. In the Forest by Edna O’Brien10. For Whom the Bell Tolls Hemingway
11. The Feast of the Goat by Vargas Llosa 475 pages (movie)12. Jazz by Toni Morrison13. Siddhartha14. The Red Queen by Margaret Drabble 352 pages
15. If Not Now, When by Levi, Primo 331 pages
16. Veronika Decides to Die
17. The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides 250 pages (movie)
18. Pavel’s Letters Monika Maron(142 pages)19. Hallucinating Foucault by Patricia Duncker (192 pages) Schizophrenia
20. Far From the Madding Crowd Hardy (433 pages) Movie
21. The Postman Always Rings Twice by Cain, James116 pages (movie)22. Operation Shylock Philip Roth(400 pages)23. The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst 438 pages (TV series)24. Never Let Me Go by Kazoo Ishiguro288 pages (movie