Loud Latin Laughing Literary musings, book log.

Got swept up in the story and devoured in a weekend. With translated works, I try not to be too picky about the writing itself, since they weren't Allende's words I was reading, but Margaret Peden's. Thus free to float on the wind of the story, I gave myself up to the drama and frantically flipped through this to the end, where Eliza is free at last.

Eliza is an orphan left at the house of an English woman and her brother in Valparaiso, Chile, taken in and cared for by Miss Rose and Mama Fresia, the Indian cook. The sweater the orphan is wrapped in was knit by Miss Rose for her brother John, the sea captain, as we find out deep in the story. Rose is full of secrets, churning out romance novels that John then sells abroad, having lost her respectability to an Austrian tenor thus swept out of England and into the wilds of Chile in the 1830s. Eliza grows up, falls in love, finds out she is pregnant six weeks after her lover has left for the gold fields of California. She meets Tao Chi'en, the Chinese cook, who stows her aboard a ship bound for California, eventually finding out she was pregnant when she miscarries in the hold. Tao is also a doctor, nurses her back to health, she assumes the identity of a Chinese boy when she arrives in San Francisco thus eluding the curious stares from women-starved men. Once she gets her strength back, she becomes a Chilean man on the hunt for her "brother" (e.g. her lover). Her search is futile, and it turns out she and Tao are much better suited for each other.

Lots of strong female characters who shun marriage in this.

Delightful, funny, poignant, thoughtful story devoured in 24 hours. A 20-something Indian, returned home after educating abroad at Yale, immersed in the absurdity of Indian Civil Service, smoking weed and surveying the remote areas of India he is to govern. His secret life of smoke, exercise, masturbation, avoidance of civil duty. His compulsion to lie at all questions directed at him. The brief shining light of a productive mission, bringing water to a village whose well had dried up. The perfect antidote to a rainy San Francisco day.

This was thrust into my hand, furtively. I looked around, no other lit-snobs were looking, so I put it in my bag, walked away from the shadowy corner. After rolling my eyes at how bad the writing was, I got into the story. You have to suspend some disbelief (Tom the Builder has sex with an "angel" hours after he buries his wife and after he abandoned his baby son, only to find out the "angel" was the woman he developed a crush on a few weeks prior), but you get swept away with the drama. True soap opera, all about the building of a cathedral in 1100 AD England by Prior Phillip and his monks, with the help of Tom the Builder, Jack Jackson, Alfred. Ellen is Jack's mother, living in sin with Tom until expelled from the village. Aliena the daugher of an earl, turns her nose up at William who then wreaks havoc on the rest of the story, raping and pillaging. Prior Phillip is an eager monk, rising from the humble rants to oversee the cathedral at Kingsbridge. His brother Francis is a convenient source of information close to the higher powers. Bishop Waleran seethes because he wants to build his own cathedral and has been thwarted by Phillip at every turn. Favorite character was probably Aliena, who went from highborn to poverty, then scraped her way out of it, selling wool, supporting her brother in his quest to regain the earldom, falling in love with Jack and having 2 children by him but still retaining her own self.

Two typos in the first 87 pages makes me decide to stop reading this. The premise is interesting, some of the bits good, but not worth subjecting my eyes to misspellings ("convwersation" on page 16 and "aother" on page 87).

Premise is that barter only existed for people trading with others they didn't know well, but that credit among societies was in existence forever. Cash was invented later, with states creating markets.

Terrifying account of an inhumane society focused on power for power's sake, stripping away basic intellectual desires like love, curiosity, objections, history. Bureaucracy abounds, keeping the Outer and Inner Party busy.

Winston Smith works at the Ministry of Truth, where his job is to rewrite old files to match the current state of affairs. If a person disappears, it's his job to eradicate that unperson from the history of Oceania. He suspects he is the only sane person, his mind not conditioned to doublethink. He hooks up with Julia, a rebellious sort whose primary interest is in following the big rules in order to cut corners on other rules and enjoy sexual freedom. Winston is the brains of the piece, battling back with O'Brien as he attempts to recondition Winston's mind. Room 101 is where the worst thing that you as an individual could endure takes place; in Winston's case, this is a cage of rats, which he betrays Julia for, demanding that they be set upon her instead.

I read this, as most people did, before I was eighteen. To require this as reading in school is an injustice, because then one can say "Oh, I've read that book," but not really. You must read this when your brain has completely formed, when you've had a few years under your belt out in the cold world of work, shuffling papers, to give it the full breadth of meaning.

Thanks to Murakami's 1Q84, which I initially picked up and then decided to postpone until I'd given 1984 a thorough re-read. Another trivia bit I picked up? George Orwell was a pseudonym for Eric Arthur Blair.

A book for book nerds, Mr. Towles knows his audience, reeling us in with bits of Dickens, Thoreau, Christie, Plato, Tolstoy. I was absolutely mesmerized by the book for the first half, and then took a peek at the back flap, to see who this "Amor Towles" (pseudonym? A-Mortal?) was who was wrapping my eyes with spellbounding words. The spell broke as soon as I read the author blurb... the head of an investment banking firm who lives in NYC with his wife and kids. For some reason, since that revelation, the voice of the narrator as a spunky, fierce, intelligent woman seemed a little off, the dialog seemed anachronistic to the year 1938, the drama seemed overblown.

Katey Kontent and her roommate Eve go out on New Years Eve 1937 to ring in the new year at a Jazz club, quickly blowing their wallets on drinks and it not being 10pm yet. In breezes Tinker Grey, all monogrammed and well dressed, looking for his brother but ending up joining their party. The three of them become fast friends, then Eve gets thrown from the car in an accident where a milk truck hits them from behind, scarring her face for life and with permanent limp. Tinker insists she move in with him to recuperate, then they eventually become an item. When Eve moves out of the boarding house and into the wealthy stratosphere, Kate quits her legal secretary work and pursues a well known editor for a job. She ends up working on a new magazine at Conde Nast, long hours but adores the work. She lives alone in a crappy apartment she can barely afford, plays 4 hands of bridge by herself, drinks gin and wine and reads a lot. She dips in and out of the social circle, meeting various folks through Eve/Tinker or work. An ill-fated "romance" with Wallace, Dickie, countless others. Tinker proposes, Eve runs away, Tinker becomes a stevedore on the docks. Wallace dies in Spain. The overwhelming maudlin quality of the last half had me skimming for plot points.

Tragically disappointing, considering the rapture I began it with.

I read this book in eight minutes. Not because it was short or one word per page, but because once I got it from the library, settled in and started to read, I realized I'd already read it, serialized, in Vanity Fair over the last year. He starts with Iceland, the land where inbred dudes seriously went haywire, and the ladies are leading them out of it. Then he travels to the wealthy monastery in Greece. Next up is Ireland, land of over-speculation on housing. A detour into the country saving Europe's bacon and yet obsessed with shit, Germany. Then winding down with a fun glimpse at California.

I'm a Michael Lewis fan, but there's no way I'm re-reading this collection of articles. Especially since he was the sole reason I got a subscription to Vanity Fair, which has been sucking.