The Secret History

by Donna Tartt

I wish I read this book before the new year, than I could have said that it was the best book I've read this year, and it would have meant something. It would have competed with Khaled Hosseini A thousand splendid suns, Haruki Murakami Hard boiled wonderland and the end of the world and Doris Lessing The golden notebooks amongs others.
Lets just say it will be a hard book to follow.

Richard is determined to study classic greek at Hampden College, a line of study he has begun back in California. He faces a challenge though, as only five people, handpicked by the proffesor, are allowed in the class. He starts term, but is fascinated by the twins, Francis, Harry and Bunny who is taking the class.
The story unravels. We discover all of their dark secrets accompanied by a seductive bohemian lifestyle.

Man Crazy

by Joyce Carol Oates

I love Oates books, most of them anyway. When I look for someting contemporary she is my first choice.
Why is she so compelling? Her stories are always raw, explicit in their details. She brings you awfully close to her characters; their vomit, abuse and shortcomings. At the same time she is vauge about what is really going on, provides you with a puzzle, bits missing and bits broken.

Man Crazy is Oates at her best, and I hold Blonde to be her best work. It is a story about a beautiful girl growing up with her beautiful but troubled mother. Ingrid, the girls name, simply craves to be loved to the extent that every man can have her, abuse her and discard her. There is blood, love and suffering throughout the book. You just can't look away or stop reading.

The Remains of the Day

by Kazuo Ishiguro

This is a great, great book about life, told by an english butler at the beginning of the last century. His name is Stevens, and he is highly dedicated to his job, or his calling as a butler. He sees great pride, and dignity in his work - serving other people. It is sometimes scary how he undermines himself, thinking other people, socially above him, deserve his respect. I can imagine that butlers had to act a certain way, and of course be loyal to their Master, but to really believe and support this heirarchy, and to mantain and enforce this ideology? It was really interesting to read a book from this butler's point of view. He talked a great deal about dignity. This is something one cannot describe - it is embedded in all of one's actions.

He lead a lonely life, distancing everyone around him, allways aiming at being a professional. Didn't dare come to close to anyone. He aimed at becoming a first class butler, taking after butlers in stories he heard. Never once realising they were humans capable of making mistakes. His role models were almost fictional, myths, and he strived to be just like them.

The prose is fantastic, the plot too. Stevens has embarked on a road trip whilst his new american employer is out of town. Stevens' life is recaptured through his reminiscences of life past. The trip has a destination, but it becomes all to clear that the road leads not only there, but into the mind of Stevens, and that maybe he'll find some new truths along the way.

Kurkov

Death and the Pinguin by Andrey Kurkov

I've finished Death and the Pinguin a week ago. I was truly disapointed. It is the most popular russian book to be translated at the moment. Andrey Kurkov's latest book, The Nightly Milkman, was so much funnier, more twisted and more relevant. And by relevant I mean more political. It was also more intelligently written.

Ukraine and its politicians were pictured in an allegory consisting of ordinary people, with shrewed problems, absurd but appicable to society. For example, Irina, one of the female protagonists is wrongly led to believe that she is giving her breast milk to motherless infants, and is forced to feed her own daughter with milk substitute. She is poor and has no other source of income. All this time, though, she is providing one of the members of parlament milk for his daily bath in order for him to keep staying young looking. It is an attack by Andrey Kurkov on the guvernment, and what has become of the orange revolution. My interpretation is that the revolution promised so many things, blinded the masses, and that Ukraine now is corrupted. Considering that the parliament and Presidency are consists of different parties, one is also lead to believe that people are disappointed.

I am not too well read on Ukrainian politics to continue this discussion, but The nighlty milkman is still a more interesting book than Death and the Pinguin as the first is much more interesting on more than one level.

Andrej Kurkov

I am currently working on my russian, chosing a russian speaking ukrainian author - Andrej Kurkov. I read his latest book The nightly milkman, this summer. Also in his native laguage. Due to my extraordinary job, which entitled me to sit at the top of Stockholm City Hall Tower and be of help to tourists, I had free time to peruse the book.

Now, I've introduced Death and the Pinguin to our small-scale bookclub consisting of myselft and three friends. It's not quite as screwed as The nightly milkman, but it relly has nothing to do with reality! I suspect that it is intended as an allegory of modern ukrainian society. He has been known for producing such books before and after...

New Classics Challenge

7 read..
I am going to read the ones highlighted in red.

1. The Road , Cormac McCarthy (2006)
2. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling (2000)
3. Beloved, Toni Morrison (1987)
4. The Liars' Club, Mary Karr (1995)
5. American Pastoral, Philip Roth (1997)
6. Mystic River, Dennis Lehane (2001)
7. Maus, Art Spiegelman (1986/1991)
8. Selected Stories, Alice Munro (1996)
9. Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier (1997)
10. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami (1997)
11. Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer (1997)
12. Blindness, José Saramago (1998)
13. Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (1986-87)
14. Black Water, Joyce Carol Oates (1992)
15. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers (2000)
16. The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood (1986)
17. Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez (1988)
18. Rabbit at Rest, John Updike (1990)
19. On Beauty, Zadie Smith (2005)
20. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding (1998)
21. On Writing, Stephen King (2000)
22. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Díaz (2007)
23. The Ghost Road, Pat Barker (1996)
24. Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry (1985)
25. The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan (1989)
26. Neuromancer, William Gibson (1984)
27. Possession, A.S. Byatt (1990)
28. Naked, David Sedaris (1997)
29. Bel Canto, Anne Patchett (2001)
30. Case Histories, Kate Atkinson (2004)
31. The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien (1990)
32. Parting the Waters, Taylor Branch (1988)
33. The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion (2005)
34. The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold (2002)
35. The Line of Beauty, Alan Hollinghurst (2004)
36. Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt (1996)
37. Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi (2003)
38. Birds of America, Lorrie Moore (1998)
39. Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri (2000)
40. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman (1995-2000)
41. The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros (1984)
42. LaBrava, Elmore Leonard (1983)
43. Borrowed Time, Paul Monette (1988)
44. Praying for Sheetrock, Melissa Fay Greene (1991)
45. Eva Luna, Isabel Allende (1988)
46. Sandman, Neil Gaiman (1988-1996)
47. World's Fair, E.L. Doctorow (1985)
48. The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver (1998)
49. Clockers, Richard Price (1992)
50. The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen (2001)
51. The Journalist and the Murderer, Janet Malcom (1990)
52. Waiting to Exhale, Terry McMillan (1992)
53. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon (2000)
54. Jimmy Corrigan, Chris Ware (2000)
55. The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls (2006)
56. The Night Manager, John le Carré (1993)
57. The Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe (1987)
58. Drop City, TC Boyle (2003)
59. Krik? Krak! Edwidge Danticat (1995)
60. Nickel & Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich (2001)
61. Money, Martin Amis (1985)
62. Last Train To Memphis, Peter Guralnick (1994)
63. Pastoralia, George Saunders (2000)
64. Underworld, Don DeLillo (1997)
65. The Giver, Lois Lowry (1993)
66. A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, David Foster Wallace (1997)
67. The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini (2003)
68. Fun Home, Alison Bechdel (2006)
69. Secret History, Donna Tartt (1992)
70. Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell (2004)
71. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Ann Fadiman (1997)
72. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon (2003)
73. A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving (1989)
74. Friday Night Lights, H.G. Bissinger (1990)
75. Cathedral, Raymond Carver (1983)
76. A Sight for Sore Eyes, Ruth Rendell (1998)
77. The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro (1989)
78. Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert (2006)
79. The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell (2000)
80. Bright Lights, Big City, Jay McInerney (1984)
81. Backlash, Susan Faludi (1991)
82. Atonement, Ian McEwan (2002)
83. The Stone Diaries, Carol Shields (1994)
84. Holes, Louis Sachar (1998)
85. Gilead, Marilynne Robinson (2004)
86. And the Band Played On, Randy Shilts (1987)
87. The Ruins, Scott Smith (2006)
88. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby (1995)
89. Close Range, Annie Proulx (1999)
90. Comfort Me With Apples, Ruth Reichl (2001)
91. Random Family, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc (2003)
92. Presumed Innocent, Scott Turow (1987)
93. A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley (1991)
94. Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser (2001)
95. Kaaterskill Falls, Allegra Goodman (1998)
96. The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown (2003)
97. Jesus’ Son, Denis Johnson (1992)
98. The Predators' Ball, Connie Bruck (1988)
99. Practical Magic, Alice Hoffman (1995)
100. America (the Book), Jon Stewart/Daily Show (2004)