The Sunday Salon

After I mentioned in my previous post how much I love and need to just take a book and install myself on the couch or in bed with tea and snacks, I came across a new initiative The Sunday Salon, inspired by Dewey’s read-a-thon:

What is the Sunday Salon? Imagine some university library’s vast reading room. It’s filled with people–students and faculty and strangers who’ve wandered in. They’re seated at great oaken desks, books piled all around them, and they’re all feverishly reading and jotting notes in their leather-bound journals as they go. Later they’ll mill around the open dictionaries and compare their thoughts on the afternoon’s literary intake….

That’s what happens at the Sunday Salon, except it’s all virtual. Every Sunday the bloggers participating in that week’s Salon get together–at their separate desks, in their own particular time zones–and read. And blog about their reading. And comment on one another’s blogs. Think of it as an informal, weekly, mini read-a-thon, an excuse to put aside one’s earthly responsibilities and fall into a good book.

Now that seems like a very good excuse to make Sunday my read-and-relax-day. Usually I don’t have anything planned on Sundays anyway, so I end up reading anyway. Needless to say I signed up for The Sunday Salon!

Leap of Faith by Queen Noor of Jordan

 

I read this book over the weekend while I wasn’t feeling well. I just stayed in bed with tea and something to eat and slept and read for two days. From time to time I need one or two days like that whether I am sick or not. It is so relaxing!

Leap of Faith are the memoirs of Queen Noor of Jordan about her life with King Hussein of Jordan, He died in 1999 and was one of the motors behind the Peace Process in the Middle East. She is an American of Arabian-Swedish descent. The two got married in 1976.

The book got off to a bad start for me, as during the first chapter or two Queen Noor’s writing style got on my nerves, especially the abundant use of adjectives to describe people, landscapes and places. Moments are “precious”, Aqaba a “wonderful” place, plans are “ambitious” – there are hardly any nouns without some descriptive adjective. Also, at the start the description of Queen Noor’s (at that time she was still called Lisa Halaby) first impressions of Jordan are slightly annoying because everything seems so fairytale-like and beautiful. Fortunately, it got better after the first few chapters, either because I got used to her writing style or the writing was just different with less adjectives (I have a feeling it’s the latter). At any rate, I got hooked and wanted to read on.

Most of the book deals with King Hussein’s efforts to reach peace in the Middle East, a considerably smaller part with Queen Noor’s own life in which she tries to balance her duties as a queen and as a mother of a large family of over ten children and stepchildren. Professionally, she devoted her energy and time to the development of culture, science and health care in Jordan and to improving the situation of women in her new fatherland. Queen Noor is a very socially engaged person who really uses her abilities, possibilities and influence to make a difference in Jordan and the Middle-East. You can sense from her writing that she loved her husband very much and how important her family and her professional activities were (are) for her. She writes with a heart about the things and the people she loves. However, the real subject of the book is not Queen Noor herself, but her husband.

The author really focuses on the positive sides of her life an her husband. Negative things are brushed over or you have to read between the lines to find  the negative sides in her own life, in her marriage and in Jordan. For example, Queen Noor simply rushes over the lack of political freedom and freedom of speech in Jordan or the honor killingsthat are still part of Jordanian traditions and deals with that in one or two paragraphs. Only in one or two places does she mention in one sentence that being a stepmother to Hussein’s children from previous marriages (Noor was his fourth wife) caused some friction in the family. Also, Queen Noor doesn’t go very deep into the loneliness she feels at times in her marriage.

Instead, she presents Hussein in a very positive light, without too much criticism, as someone who is driven by the search for peace in the Middle-East. I guess it is no wonder that she is so positive about him and his actions, as he was her husband and the couple obviously loved each other very much. And of course, it is undeniable that peace in the Middle East is a noble cause to work for. However, at some point, I felt I was getting somewhat annoyed by the book, but I can’t really put my finger on why exactly. Maybe it’s because all in all Queen Noor doesn’t dig very deep. She stays on the surface. Yes, she tells about the actions of her husband searching for peace in detail, but I feel that most of that is in one way or another available in other sources and books as well. She adds some personal detail, but that is it.

Despite these negative points, I did enjoy the book. Queen Noor is a woman who deserves respect for not taking the easy road in life and for trying to make a difference. I like reading about the Middle-East – it is such a fascinating and complex region with a long history. For people interested to learn more about the recent history of the Middle-East in an accessible way, this is definitely an interesting book and I do recommend it.

Afgunst by saskia Noort

 

Afgunst (Dutch for jealousy) is a short novel by Dutch author Saskia Noort. She is quite well-known in Holland for her literary thrillers (think Nicci French), but this is the first book I’ve ever read by her. Her books have been translatedinto other languages as well. I had planned read this book this weekend during Dewey’s read-a-thon, but since I won’t be able to participate due to a wedding on Sunday, I took the book to read in bed last night. I didn’t feel to well, so when I came home I made tea and went to bed to read. Finished the book in little over an hour or so as it is under 100 pages. To be honest, I didn’t particularly care much for Afgunst and I am not tempted to read any of Noort’s other books.

Neither of the two main characters Susan and Ernst are very likable. Susan is a successful Dutch writer, married with two small children with a lover on the side who is a successful TV-presenter, who is busy doing book-tours around the country. Ernst is her ex-boyfriend with whom she broke up fifteen years ago. Their relationship was one in which he was completely dominating her and she was adapting to his every wishes: he disapproved of lipstick, so she wouldn’t wear it; he thought her long blond hair made her look like a prostitute, so she had it cut; high heels made her longer than he was, which he disliked, so she stopped wearing high heels. They were both aspiring writers, but Ernst kept telling her she doesn’t have much talent, needs to grow as a person. He was the one who was going to be successful, not she.

Obviously things worked out differently in life, and she was the one who became successful. This caused an immense jealousy to grow inside Ernst over the years and he wanted to take revenge. One evening, after Susan gave a lecture at a library in some village, he kidnaps her and hides her in some barn. The story takes place during this one night when Ernst holds Susan captive.

Apart from the first and the last chapter, the story is told alternating between Ernst and Susan. The past and their different views on it come to live through their thoughts. Especially in Ernst’s case you are really inside his mind and reading his thoughts, whereas the parts written through Susan’s eyes tend to be more descriptive. The events of that one night unfold in the parts told from Susan’s perspective, while Ernst’s thoughts are more of a commentary to that night and their common past.

Though I didn’t care much for Susan, the twist in the very last chapter made me feel a bit sorry for her and made me hope she would at least dump her lover as he turns out to be quite the selfish a**hole. After finishing the book, I was actually left with only one question: why her lover did what he did, because I cannot for the life of me find a reasonable motive for him to be so incredibly selfish and inhuman.

Digging to America by Anne Tyler

I had just mentioned this book in one of my previous postsand then I stumbled upon this book last Friday at Artbridge, a tiny bookstore annex cafe in Yerevan which has a small collection of English books, mostly hardcover (so expensive), but is your best bet in Yerevan to find recent books. Which is pretty sad, as Artbridge is so small. I have said this many times before (but never on this blog, so that’s a legit reason to say it one more time ), but the one thing that I really-really-really miss in Armenia is a bookstore with a good selection of English books. Apart from Digging to America I picked up A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini as well. You kind of have to buy the books you want when you see them at Artbridge, because once they’re gone, they might not come back. The nice thing is that they always bring in different books, but the downside is that when they have a book you want, you’d better buy it. Well, downside… It is a good excuse to buy books after all.

After a week of leaving the house at eight in the morning and not getting back before ten in the evening (the one time I did get back at eight, I was asleep on the couch by 8:30), Saturday was finally a day off for me. I picked up Digging to America in the morning and finished it before the afternoon was over. I enjoyed the book a lot. It was exactly right for its purpose: a relaxing and interesting read, that kept me hooked till the end.

The story begins when two families are waiting at the airport for their adopted baby-girls who are arriving from Korea. One family, Bitsy and Brad Donaldson, is very boisterous, loud and about as American as you can get, the other, Ziba and Sami Yazdan are an Iranian-American couple. The two families become friends and their lives become more and more intertwined over the years. The Donaldsons try to raise their daughter with respect for her Korean heritage, keeping her Korean name, having her wear Korean costumes on her birthday. The Yazdans on the other hand try to raise their daughter as an American girl, giving her an English name. They want their daughter to “fit in”, just as they themselves have always been trying to fit in the American society and trying to forget about their “otherness”, despite keeping Iranian traditions alive in the relations with their relatives and despite having lived in the US for decades.

The most interesting parts for me were the parts from the perspective of the Iranian couple and the husband’s mother Maryam, their efforts to fit in, Maryam’s questioning her own values and her independence. The life of immigrants to the US and the issue of fitting in is one that comes back in another book I recently read – Black Dog of Fate by Peter Balakian, which I will write about when I finish my review of it. Apart from that, my own situation is similar: I am also living in a country and a culture that is not my own and having to decide how much I want to fit in and how much I want to keep my “otherness”.

I felt mostly drawn to the characters of Sami’s mother Maryam, a widow for whom her independence and her “otherness” and her own privacy are very important. She doesn’t like to be drawn into others’ lives and events too much. I could relate to her need for privacy, her independence, and her feeling of “being different”. I also liked Connie, Bitsy’s mother who dies of cancer during the book, for the way she handles her disease. Bitsy Donaldson kind of irritated me throughout the book with her I-know-it-best attitude. And her name kept reminding me of Bitchy, even though she was not really bitchy, despite being rather annoying.

The book changes perspective in every chapter, alternating between the Donaldson family and the Yazdans. This worked well for me except for the one chapter told from the perspective of Jin-Ho, the daughter of the Donaldsons. I found that chapter kind of “the odd one out”. All of sudden Bitsy and Brad were referred to as “Jin-Ho’s mother” and “Jin-Ho’s father” and there were other things that irritated me slightly in this chapte.

All in all, a very good book to read on a rainy Sunday afternoon or when you have an evening to yourself.

Want to read!

Due to a very chaotic life in the past weeks, it took a while to start posting regularly here, but now we’re off! I have some almost finished reviews so I should start to post regularly from now on. I will try to put up a post every week or ten days with the books that I read about in reviews, blogs or elsewhere that I added to my want-to-read list. This  time they are (in random order).

In this article from The Guardian six feminists are asked about the “the writing that first opened their eyes to the women’s movement”. The article mentions more than one book or writer I’d like to read, but I’m particularly interested in this one:

[...] Brothers, by the late Bernice Rubens, was a fictional trawl through Jewish history, beginning with the build up to the pogroms in the late 1800s. It followed the fate of two brothers named Bindel, and their descendants, in order to question how certain groups of people become oppressed. The book’s analysis of how colonisation of any one people builds and is maintained spoke volumes to me.

Also, Virginia Woolf is mentioned as an inspiration. Over the last year or so, for whatever reason she keeps popping up in things I read, so I have become very interested in reading her works. So far I’ve only read some excerpts from her diaries, which did whet my appetite for more.

From the New York Times Sunday Book Reviews of the last two weeks, I noticed these:

Like You’d Understand Anyway: Stories – Jim Shepard:

Shepard’s surprising, enthralling tales feature such diverse characters as a Parisian executioner, a woman in space and two Nazi scientists searching for the yeti.

An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England – Brock Clarke:

No writer’s house — neither Frost’s, nor Twain’s, nor Wharton’s, nor Thoreau’s — is safe in this comic whodunit.

Murder in Amsterdam: Liberal Europe, Islam and the Limits of Tolerance – Ian Buruma:

Buruma, who was born in the Netherlands but has lived mostly abroad for the past 30 years, has made a career of analyzing foreign cultures. Here he returns to his native land to examine the 2004 murder of the filmmaker Theo van Gogh. A Dutch-born Islamist of Moroccan descent shot van Gogh, angry at “Submission,” a film he had made with the Somali-born femi nist Ayaan Hirsi Ali about the treatment of women under Islam. Buruma tries to understand why the Dutch multi cultural experiment has not gone well, despite the government’s liberal immigration policies and lavish social services. More important than Islam’s influence, Buruma suggests, is “the question of authority … in a society from which a young Moroccan male might find it easier to receive subsidies than respect.”

A Woman in Jerusalem – A. B. Yehoshua:

When an unidentified woman is killed in a suicide bombing at a Jerusalem market, the owner of the bakery where (it is eventually discovered) she worked asks his human resources manager to find out what happened and to make amends. This bureaucrat, who is never named, brings the woman’s body to her mother’s village in a former Soviet republic. Wrestling with the indifference of authorities, the hostility of the woman’s relatives and his own failed marriage, the man is transformed into a morally engaged individual and even a sort of hero.

Death of a Writer – Michael Collins:

This darkly funny murder mystery takes on a liberal-arts college English department. When a professor sinks into a coma after a failed suicide attempt, a graduate student discovers the thriller he wrote about the murder of a young girl that was quietly published some years earlier. The book becomes a sensation and attracts the attention of a local detective, who turns up evidence that it may not be fiction.

Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History – Laurel Thatcher Ulrich:

Ulrich [...] uses “three classic works in Western feminism” as a springboard for examining the theme of “bad” behavior. Could the popularity of her slogan, she wondered, be explained by “feminism, postfeminism or something much older?” The answer emerges in Ulrich’s choice of texts: Christine de Pizan’s “Book of the City of Ladies,” written in 1405; Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s “Eighty Years and More,” published in 1898; and “A Room of One’s Own,” based on two lectures Virginia Woolf gave in 1928 — all works by women who “turned to history as a way of making sense of their own lives.” History, Ulrich reminds us, “isn’t just what happens in the past,” but what we choose to remember. As much invention as discovery, history attempts to make the chaotic present into a coherent picture by comparing it to images, equally artificial, fashioned from events long past.[...]Ulrich’s new book is a work of selection and synthesis; she finds common archetypes in far-flung sources, making connections that are sometimes distant but never tenuous. The “Amazons” chapter is illustrated by examples from archaeological digs in Kazakhstan, South American folk tales and her own cultural backyard, which yields “an Olympic athlete, a female soldier, a lesbian separatist, a comic-book heroine.” Her associative logic reveals how A prefigures Q or even Z rather than ordering A before B before C, and brings a female sensibility to what is more typically the linear, cause-and-effect formula of history, a majority of which, Ulrich points out, is written by men.

You can read the first chapter here.

Other Colors: Essays and a Story – Orhan Pamuk:

In “Other Colors”, his first big assemblage of nonfiction, Pamuk gives us several of his many selves in a centrifugal gathering of memory-pieces, sketches, interviews and unexpected flights. The result is a gallery of Pamuks: here is the author of the haunted, half-lit inquiry into melancholy and neglect, “Istanbul: Memories and the City,” with further glimpses of the “forest of secret stairways” that is his home; here is the man who so loves books that he wrote a whole novel, “The New Life,” about a character whose life is turned around by a book, with essays on the writers who possess him. Here, too, is the author of the fearlessly topical Islamic novel “Snow,” who, two years ago, was brought to trial by his government after telling a Swiss newspaper it was taboo in Turkey to mention the local slaughter of a million Armenians and 30,000 Kurds, offering public statements on freedom of expression; and here, round every corner, is the whimsical, endlessly inventive juggler of possibilities writing pieces in the voice of the subjects of a painting, and, in one mischievous chapter, of what he calls “Meaning” itself.

Digging to America – Anne Tyler:

Tyler’s 17th novel is an intimate portrait of two Baltimore families, one Iranian-American, who meet in the summer of 1997 when both adopt baby girls from Korea. The families’ improbable friendship illuminates what it means to be an American and whether an immigrant can ever feel completely at home here. In the Iranian-born Maryam, the grandmother of one of the babies, Tyler shows us a woman caught between two cultures and two countries.

From the (online) papers to the blogs. One of my favorite bookbloggers Dovegrey Reader put up a post on a book that sounds very interesting: The World Through Blunted Sight by Patrick Trevor-Hope.

Written by a consultant opthalmologist [..] with a love of art, here is a fascinating study of how visual defects affected many painters, sculptors, poets and writers throughout history and was thus reflected in their work in a variety of ways.[...] None of it had ever occurred to me before and so every chapter a revelation.Short and long-sight would obviously have an impact on an artist’s work, astigmatism too very likely to distort the final image.Paintings re-photographed through correcting lenses suddenly look strangely correctly proportioned.[...]Patrick Trevor-Roper makes some interesting suggestions, was Constable colour blind? His fondness for autumn tints may indicate that he was. Was Impressionism the result of a generation of short-sighted artists? Interestingly how do colour blind writers describe colour accurately with such a limited palette available? Or perhaps they are just very vague about it?