Sunday Salon: A Japanese Pairing

I woke up this morning to sunshine :D although the weather forecast says we will be back to torrential rain and wind by late afternoon :(
I spent a good 10 hours reading yesterday, finishing 2 books and I'm halfway through The Knife of Never Letting Go. When I opened the first page and saw a lack of punctuation and misspelt words I thought I would be abadoning it quickly, but after a page I was gripped. Eye strain was all that made me give in and send myself to bed.
Today I'm being creative Peanut Butter Cookies to bake for work tomorrow, ATC's to be made and then snuggling back down with A Suitable Boy and then The Knife of Never Letting Go!!! Can't wait.

Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami
I read this book really early in the week and for some reason didn't write anything about it - I always write about books as soon as I finish them.
Sumrie has given up college and work to become a writer, she almost lives in a parallel world to everyone else, she gets up in the afternoon and writes all night. Her only real point of contact in the world is her best friend, our narrator. He is secretly in love with her but knows that she has no feelings for him.
When Sumrie meets Miu at a wedding her life quickly changes. She falls in love with the older woman, who offers her work and thus transforms her life into that of a normal young woman. Things turn strange when Sumrie and Miu travel to Europe together on a business trip.
I read The Wind Up Bird Chronicle and a collection of Murakami's short stories, I was expecting this book to be stranger, more magic realsim. What I did love was the smoothness with which it could be read.

Piercing by Ryu Murakami
This book I polished off last night in about 90 minutes. Kawashima is overcome at night by a fierce sweat and the smell of burning, and then the intense desire to stab someone with an ice pick. At this point his desire is to stab his 4 month old baby daughter. Desperate to rid himself of this desire he creates a plan to stab a prostitute, believing that he will then be able to return to a normal life.
What Kawashima doesn't expect is to pick a prostitute who was also abused as a child and who is also suffering the everlasting effects of such abuse.
The tale is a very strange one, violence threatens to spill over on every page, and I often found found myself wincing not knowing if I really wanted to read the next line in case he finally managed to stab her. Despite this, this book was strangely engrossing and I found that I couldn't stop reading because I had a desire to discover what happened next.

Challenge:
Japanese literature reading challenge.

My Thoughts: The Glass Room by Simon Mawer

In my pledge to create myself a mini-read-a-thon this weekend so that I can tackle my huge pile of books I have read for a good 4 and a half hours today and knocked the first book off of the pile :D Only about 50 more to go! lol

The Glass Room is the second book in the 2009 Booker Shortlist which I have read, and it definately deserves to be part of that list. (I've read the winner, and thought that this was the better of the books).

The Glass Room is actually a glass house, a thoroughly modern home built on a hillside over looking a Czech city. The house, built for the Landauer family, becomes the symbol of sexual and emotional relationships as the novel progresses.

Viktor and Lisel Landauer have this home built in the early days of their marriage, when life is a bunch of roses for the family. Viktor is the founder of a famous car manufacturer, and the wealthy couple fill their home with piano recitals and modern art. The glass building becomes a home for their small family, a symbol of oppulance and luxury.
As the marriage cools, Viktor finds comfort away from home, whilst Lisel's life is made exciting through the gossip and behaviour of her sexually adventurous best friend Hana.
When the war looms, Viktor and Lisel are forced to move away, he a Jew and she a German. They escape with his mistress over the border to Switzerland. The house then becomes an empty shell, facing the destruction of bombs, govermental ownership and possession and scientific experimentation.
The characters gripped me from early on, especially Hana and Kata, Viktor's lover. But all in all I wanted to know what happened to the characters, how their life turned out. I felt robbed when I discovered that the book suddenly moved 20 odd years into the future and I had missed out hearing about Ottilie (love that name) and Martin's childhood. The house reminded me of the house in To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. There is a segment in that novel when the war is occuring and the destruction of Britain and the family is characterised by the deterioration of the family home.
A fantastic read, I highly recommend it.

Challenges:
War Through the Generations
Booker

Time, time, time...

Feels like a long time since I had the time to sit down and read properly. I have books stacking up. I finally have some free time this weekend as I have no teaching till Wednesday, teacher training Monday and Tuesday. This weekend (which is looking pretty dismal both socailly and weather wise) I'm thinking of doing a mini-read-a-thon on my own. 8-12 hours each day, hopefully that'll knock a few of the books off the piles.
So hopefully you might see some reviews coming up on this sadly neglected blog. My google reader is drowning in several hundred posts, so I'll be marking them all as read and starting afresh.

Sunday Salon: A New Challenge

Biblophile by the Sea is hosting the 2010 Reading From My Shelves Project. Participants are asked to decide how many books they want to rid their shelves of during 2010. Books should be read and then found a new home (easy for me as a bookcrosser).
I've decided to aim for 36 books, 3 per month. I could easily have doubled that number but I wanted to be realistic. I've also created a list as I want to focus on books which have been lurking years or that are bookcrossing books which I shouldn't be hoarding.

1. Nights at the Circus, Carter (started twice at least already)
2. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, Calvino
3. Koroko, Soseki
4. In the Skin of a Lion, Ondaatje
5. A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters, Barnes
6. Love, Morrison
7. The Dante Club, Pearl
8. Court in the Air, Hunt
9. The Emigrants, Sebald
10. Atomised, Houllebecq
11. The Bridge, Banks
12. Walking on Glass, Banks
13. Senor the Coca Lord, De Bernieres
14. The Notebooks of Don Rigoberta, Volsa
15. North and South, Gaskell
16. Bellefleur, Oates
17. Tender is the Night, Fitzgerald
18. The Robber Bride, Atwood
19. Enduring Love, McEwan
20. East of the Mountains, Guteson
21. Mao, Chang
22. Wild Swans, Chang
23. Krakatoa, Winchester
24. Arthur and George, Barnes
25. Yellow Dog, Amis
26. The Tapestries, Nguyen
27. Death of an Ancient King, Gaude
28. Women in Love, Lawrence
29. A Century of Short Stories by Women, Lee (ed.)
30. My Spoons Came From Woolworths, Comyns
31. America, Kafka
32. Tsotsi, Fugard
33. The Sound and the Fury, Faulkner
34. People's Act of Love, Meek
35. Gilead, Robinson
36. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Kundera

My Thoughts: Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

It has been a manic couple of weeks since the read-a-thon finished, despite having a school holiday last week I was working, seeing friends or partying all week. Going back to work this week has meant that tons of stuff suddenly had to be done. Our school is sitting the pupils early for their English Language exam, we have to mark all their coursework by this Friday - a couple are still missing pieces, and then they have their exams next week! I'm way more stressed than the kids are. Thats without all the normal school stuff and extra work I have in my new role.
So...rather than picking a nice easy book to read I picked up Wolf Hall, the recent Booker winner.

The novel is 650 pages long, but in hardback so bloody heavy. Its starts with Cromwell's childhood, growing up beaten by an alcoholic father till the age of 15 when he runs away. The book then chronicles his gradual rise in the British monarchy till he became the Henry's right-hand man.

I loved parts of this. Cromwell's relationship with his family, his dealings with Mary Boyelen, all the affairs and his conversations with his son and nephew. It was also a very readable novel. However I felt that I missed out on tons of stuff as I knew nothing of the history of this time, except recognising the names. The author has a huge cast of charcaters and the novel spans 35 years. I was often lost as to which Henry or Mary they were discussing. Segments frequently started with 'he...' and it wasn't until a page later that I could work out who they were talking about.

I'm sending this out on a bookring to 5 other people, it will probably return to me next summertime. I'm thinking that I may do a bit of reading on the period and then try and tackle this again next year when I'm more clued up.

My Thoughts: Creole Folktales by Patrick Chamoiseau

I love folktales so when this was offerred as a bookring on bookcrossing I jumped at the chance to read it. The folk tales are from Chamoiseau's home island Martinique.

I started off loving this book and each tale, by the end I was enjoying the folktales less I'm not sure if this was the tales themselves which didn't grip me as much or if I had just overdosed in too short a space of time. I'm not going to talk about them all, I've just picked out a couple of those I loved.

'The Rainmaker' is the story of a village often suffering drought, one of the villagers brings a small boy to the village. The boy shows the villagers that with a needle he can draw the rainclouds closer and closer and make them shed their rain. He can even determine how much rain they drop. A village elder wishes for a shower not knowing that this is the only type of rain the village will now get.


'Madame Kelman' This short story reminded me very much of Hansel and Gretel and of several African folktales. A young unwanted daughter is sent into the forest each night with an impossible task to fill, the mother is hoping she will come to harm without the mother having a direct hand in her death. One day she sends the girl out with another errand and the girl searches and searched for the item which doesn't exist and ends up getting lost in the forest. She comes across a house with a witch inside, disgiused as an old lady. The witch promises her she can eat any of the lovely food on display if she brings the witch some water from the river. After drinking gallons of water and not fulfilling her promise the witch says she will feed the starving girl if the girl can find out the witches name. The girl ventures back out into the forest again and eventually discovers the witches name, when this is evealed to the witch the witch has to fulfill her promise. In a rage the witch rips off the horn of a bull, the leg of a donkey and the graceful neck of a crab leaving them all as we see them today.

This book is worth picking out, I think I'll get my own copy as it would be lovely to dip into this every now and again.

For the A-Z challenge

Do you have any particular countries folktales that you love?

Women Unbound Meme

1. What does feminism mean to you? Does it have to do with the work sphere? The social sphere? How you dress? How you act?

Feminism means to me the right for women to be equal to men in every sphere of life, to have the same rights and opportunities. It's not about how you dress or act, but the freedom to chose to dress and act how you want.

2. Do you consider yourself a feminist? Why or why not?

Yes and no. I have always felt it was important to go out and get what I want in life whether that is a job or to purchase something. I treat the girls in my class in exactly the same way as the boys, and teach them that they can do anything that the boys can do. When I have a family I will ensure that the boys and girls (if I get a mix) are treated the same.
However, I like boys to pay for the first date, I would never ask a guy out on a first date and think a girl is really brave if she can do this. I also still rely on men to come and do those things for me which I'm not strong enough to do - like changing a wheel. And I desperately want to be able to stay home when I have kids till they are in full time education. I still freak out if girls in my class burp or fart in public and can often b heard saying 'thats not very lady-like' when they are messing around with the boys. (Mainly because they are 14 and jumping around in teensy skirts).
I think I'm one of those women who want the best bits of both worlds.

3. What do you consider the biggest obstacle women face in the world today? Has that obstacle changed over time, or does it basically remain the same?

Women are now expected to be able to have it all, the family, the perfect home, a great job, to go to the gym and attend social functions. Its great that they have a much wider sphere to play in I just wonder if I'd ever be able to fit it all in with a full time job. At school we often see kids whose parents both work full time and aren't there when the kids get home from school. You sometimes get the feeling that they are trying to provide their child with everything, but what the kid really needs is a parent who is home more. That said these children are often the confident kids and often in top sets so it obviously isn't harming them too much. I think it depends on the way both the husband and wife work as a team.

See what everyone else said here