As I mentioned in a previous post, his books on delights were mentioned to me by two different people in two totally different settings so I decided to stay sane in all the seriousness of my life, reading something lighter might be a good thing to do. I guess I was thinking delights like flowers, food, etc. but this is more like a series of short essays about life all written in the span of one year–his gardening, experiences strolling around his neighborhood and favorite coffee shops, food, his parents, his wife, some personal history, his experience as a college professor, children. However, he also addresses serious issues–his meeting a homeless veteran just out from a stint in a mental facility and how he was compelled to help out after first driving off, racism he has experienced, his issues with the government and social media, family death, and life in general. And above all, what it means to him to identify as a poet.
As a person who works with high school students mostly non-white, many of whom have family members who are undocumented, I worry and need to find daily delights to stay sane. I decided to make a list of some of the past week’s delights:
-afternoons 70 degrees, sunny, no wind
-hummingbirds sipping nectar from both flowers and the two feeders
-singing a song the lyrics of which come from a poem by Langston Hughes where he dreams a world with no racism
-sitting on the back patio, listening to birdsong while I read a book about delights
-learning that all the rains have eliminated drought in California
-appreciating all the colors of the flowers blooming in my yard
Another intriguing novel by an author who has won both the Pulitzer and the National Book Award. Initially the four main characters do not seem to have any interactions with each other. 12 year old Evie’s life is changed forever when her father, the inventor of the first aqualung, makes her submerge in a pool to prove it works. She becomes one of the world’s most famous divers and oceanographers. Ina, an artist, grew up in US naval bases all over the South Pacific and eventually finds herself at a university in Illinois. Rafi, a genius black child, is pushed by his dad to apply to a private Jesuit high school where he meets Todd, a rich kid whose whose family provides scholarships to the school. The two become best friends in spite of different interests. Rafi loves literature and Todd loves computers. They bond over a thousands of years old Chinese game with which they become obsessed. They become roommates at the same university where Ina is a student. The three become best friends.
Decades later all these lives become intertwined on an island in the South Pacific–Makatea in French Polynesia, an island where the harvesting of giant phosphorus deposits nearly ruined it while furnishing the rest of the world with fuel to make planets grows faster and better and feed the world. Because of Evie’s obsession with the sea, I learned enormous amounts about the ocean and the varied animals that live there, some of which I had never heard of before. Because of Todd’s obsession with computers and his invention of an AI game, I learned a lot about how gaming works and how people become addicted. For Rafi, the agony and anger of often being the one left out, the one seen as the smart Black kid, and the only one in many circumstances affect how he views the world and himself and where life eventually takes him. From his character I learned new things about literature and how books and writing affect people and their relationships.
I could not stop reading this book. Years ago, when it first came out, I read the author’s novel, “The Overstay”. While the topics and characters are totally different, in some ways this novel reminded me of that story, of how our lives are often intertwined in all sorts of ways we never expected.
Two days ago I drove to the local library to return “The Historian” and inquire about a book an acquaintance had recommended. The library houses a used book section at its front hall entrance. I usually only glance at it because mostly it contains books in which I have zero interest. I glanced once again. There in nonfiction I saw NERUDA painted in big, bold bright colors-blue, red, green, purple–across the top half of a book cover. Just below this was a parade of flowers marching across the middle of the cover in the same bold, bright colors. Finally, at the bottom painted in bright red on a black background in capital letters it read, “MEMOIRS.” Inside the O is printed in the same red these words,”confieso que he vivido.” I snatched it up. The little sign said 25 cents. Although I’ve read Neruda poems mostly translated into English, I had no idea he had written anything about his own life. I knew I had to read this. I knew some things about his fascinating life. I wanted to know more. I dug around in my wallet, found a quarter, and deposited in the little brown box one of the librarians had indicated.
Later at home, I read the beginning, his brief introduction, explaining there are gaps here and there. He also explains, “What the memoir writer remembers is not the same as what the poet remembers.” He goes on to explain this. I will need to contemplate this more. Then in the beginning of the first chapter, “The Country Boy”, he describes “The Chilean Forest”. It starts, “Under the volcanoes, beside the snow-capped mountains, among the huge lakes, the fragrant, the silent, the tangled Chilean forest…” What continues is a prose poem describing this forest with intense sensory detail so clear the reader can see the details, the mystery, the lushness. He ends with this poem with the words, “Anyone who hasn’t been in the Chilean forest does not know this planet. I have come out of this landscape, that mud, that silence to roam, to go singing through the world.” Reading this beginning instantly linked me to his poetry I had read, to its sensory detail, to its lyricism.
They say we are all products of the environment in which we grew up whether we like it or not. Reading this is making me view this truism in a new light.
This is my fourth Murakami book in the past couple of months and his latest work. In the Afterword he notes that the core of this long novel is a novella published in 1980 in a literary magazine. He was never satisfied with it and never allowed it to be republished in book form. Yet he knew “this contained something vital for me.” Like his other works I have read, the settings include young people, libraries, and strange events many of which are akin to what is called magical realism. The boundaries between reality and the imagination are blurred and questions who we are and what is real.
It begins with a young couple, 17 and 16, in love. The girl tells the boy about this strange walled town and tells him her real self resides there. She describes it in detail and tells him he could go there and become the Dream Reader in the library in this town which has no books, just old dreams that need to be read and where the main animal form is unicorns who often die in mass during the harsh winters there. One day with no warning, she disappears. In one form or another he spends the rest of his life searching for her. Somehow he ends up in this bizarre town where he has to give up his shadow to remain. He has substantial issues with this as he watches his shadow become ill and nearly die.
Later, after a successful career as a book dealer for a large corporation, he suddenly retires and decides to apply for a head library position in a small town in the remote mountains. He meets the previous head librarian whose life is full of mystery and where the reality of this real place and the bizarre town seem blurred. He meets a strange teenager who practically lives in the library reading books with great rapidity day after day. His relationship with the boy develops and he sees what he has been seeking his entire life.
This book takes a look at what is reality, the subconscious, and life’s meaning. It is also an ode to libraries and books and love.
A young woman, Alexandra, travels to Sofia, Bulgaria, for a job as an English teacher in part to help her recover from the strange disappearance (and probably death) of her brother. She has barely arrived when she helps an elderly couple and the man with them. By accident she ends up with an urn of ashes in a bag when her luggage and theirs gets a bit mixed up. The ashes are inside an ornately and unusually carved box with the name Stoyan Lazarov engraved on it. She sets out to find them with the help of a young cab driver.
As they set out on this journey, they discover they are being followed but have no idea why. The cab driver whom she calls Bobby has keen observation skills which mystify her at first. They find part of the family and then unfortunate things occur to many they meet who are relatives or are connected to the man whose name is on the box. Without initially realizing it, they become involved in Bulgarian politics and political corruption as they try to unravel the story of the box and the man whose ashes it contains.
As I read this novel, which is both a lesson on the horrible Soviet occupation of Bulgaria and human determination and resilience, I became entranced with the history and culture of Bulgaria. If you want a glimpse into another culture and its history and the beauty of the Bulgarian landscape, I highly recommend this book. It is also a mystery story that keeps the reader going.
The author also wrote an earlier book called “The Historian” which is a novel about the history of Vlad the Impaler who is the real person behind the Dracula stories. I plan to read that novel as well.
This is my first Murakami novel; it will not be my last. It’s fascinating and profound. A 15 year old boy, Kafka, runs away from home. His mother and older sister disappeared when he was four. He does not remember them. His father, a famous sculptor, ignores him. Although they live in the same house, they rarely see each other. After running away, he finds a private (but open to the public) library in another city and is taken in by the two people in charge of the library.
Nakata, another main character who is an elderly man, is not very bright due to a bizarre event that sent him to the hospital in a coma when he was a child. He talks to cats and makes fish and eel fall from the sky like rain. He becomes friends with another principal character, a young truck driver, who helps him out because Nakata reminds him of his grandfather.
The novel portrays the lives of these characters through their actions, dreams, and fantastical events. The unreal becomes real and people learn about their true selves through these events.
This is a sort of travelogue, memoir, and recipe book. The author begins in Odessa and travels south from there to the port of Constanza in Romania as well as various other seaside towns in Bulgaria, then to Istanbul. After spending more time there she heads east to all the ports and some inland cities near Turkey’s Black Sea coast.
I hope to learn new information and become a little more enlightened when I read–especially when reading non-fiction. This book did not disappoint. Here are a few of the things I learned:
-Odessa is a very old and once a very international city. At one point it had the second largest Jewish population in Europe. Now only about 1/3 of the residents are Jewish. Many of the restaurants serve traditional Jewish food even if not Jewish. Once in the past, Mark Twain visited there and made it famous for its ice cream.
-In Constanza, Romania, she witnessed a huge Navy Day celebration with booming gun salutes. Once upon a time, this city was famous for its Casino which now is just a glorious ruin. Here a breakfast mainstay is polenta with a mushroom topping. The author apparently liked the food because this section contains more recipes.
-Varna is the main seaport city in Bulgaria. The author’s main quest here was to see the gold, yes, gold. Once upon a time, this city was a major Roman port. Now the Museum of Archeology houses a spectacular collection of ancient gold. “Breastplates, bracelets, burial gifts, regal-looking head pieces, figurines, and pendants–all gold–shone for attention. The silent Midas room was deafening, ringing out with finery, treasure and opulence. And the loudest, biggest treasure of all, was the smallest. Tiny pendant earrings, almost inconceivably old, dating back 6000 years….these earring are the oldest ‘worked gold’ in the world. They belonged to the first known culture to craft golden artifacts, and they lived here, on Bulgaria’s section of the Black Sea in what some archeologists consider the oldest prehistoric town. But it was not gold that made this area wealthy; it was salt which was mined nearby. The world salary comes from the Latin word ‘salarium’–a Roman soldier’s stipend to buy salt.
-She goes to Istanbul and then on to Turkey’s Black Sea towns, Amasra, several a bit inland, Sinop, Trabzon, and Rize. Sinop has a particularly good harbor. There is a saying that the Black Sea has three safe harbors, July, August, and Sinop. This is in an area often targeted by Cossacks who crossed the Black Sea to raid these more prosperous areas. The town also houses an infamous prison where Russian convicts taught Turkish cellmates how to make model ships for which the town is now famous.-More than 3/4 of the world’s hazelnuts are grown in this area of Turkey. However, that did surprise me as much as the tea, yes, tea. When I think of Turkey, I think of that thick, strong Turkish coffee. However, Turkey is the fifth largest grower and exporter of tea in the world. The tea grows in the fog and mist on steep slopes that end at the sea. Several photos in the book illustrate the lush green mountains covered in tea bushes.
-When I think of Hagia Sophia, I think of the spectacular building in Istanbul, the one that has withstood invasions and earthquakes. But there is another one. On the western edges of the city of Trabzon, there is a smaller, more tranquil Hagia Sophia, one of the Black Sea area’s most spectacular monuments. It was built as a church in the 13th century, converted to a mosque, then to a cholera hospital, then a museum and finally back to a mosque in 2013. The ceiling and walls are covered with frescoes that for a long time no one knew existed until they were restored.
In addition to all the tales of her adventures and the ordinary people she meets, the book is filled with recipes that are specialties of the areas she visited. I’ve taken some ideas from several to experiment with new dishes like combining Swiss chard and sultanas (golden raisins) with chopped onions and garlic sautéed in olive oil and served over Basmati rice.
I enjoyed the previous book by Caroline Eden so much I searched for this one. I doubt I will ever make it to Samarkand or Tashkent, places sort of on my bucket list, so what I do is read everything I find about these fabled cities on the Silk Road. The sub-title of this one is “Recipes and Stories From Central Asia and The Caucasus”. It starts with Samarkand and the story of Tamerlane, the legendary hero who conquered a lot of this area and a large portion of surrounding areas in 1370. He was a military genius who loved chess and made up his own chess game with twice the number of pieces.
What foods show up in both the stories and recipes? Beets, fruit–dried and fresh for which the area is famous, tomatoes, cucumber, pomegranates, cabbage, lentils, rice, lamb and mutton, and all sorts of kebabs and flatbreads. I learned there is a huge beach on Lake Issyk-Kul in Kyrgyzstan. It is one of the world’s largest alpine lakes and in summer people from Russia and all over Central Asia flock to its shores. People who own guest houses there make all their money for the entire year in the brief summer between mid-July and mid-August.
In the remote mountains of Azerbaijan lies the small town of Gyrmyzy Gasaba above the Qudiyaleay River, a town where all the people are Jewish. Even though Azerbaijan is a predominantly Shia Muslim country, the people in this town have peacefully lived here for hundreds of years. This town is considered the last surviving pre-Holocaust Jewish town untouched by WWII.
If you are a lover of apples, then consider this country, Kazakhstan, the place where apples originated. All apples in the world today come from the original apples here. The name of the largest city, Almaty, whose older name was Alma-Ata means fatherland of apples. In Ile-Altalan National Park on the northern slopes of the Tien Shan mountain chain thousands of acres of wild apples flourish.
Even though this book was published less than ten years ago in 2016, a lot of people must have been interested in reading the stories and recipes because the copy the library found for me is not in the best condition. Before I return it, I will copy some of the recipes to try.
writingontherim 