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.
“What are you willing to give up to alleviate someone else’s suffering?”
This book won the National Book Award for Non-fiction in 2025. I started reading it before book four but had to take a break. It is very serious and details a lot of dreadful recent and not so recent history. The author discusses in detail the gap between Western ideals and the reality the West enacts using examples from Gaza, his stint as a journalist in Afghanistan and other war torn places. He notes the betrayals of free speech, the betrayals of indigenous people, the betrayals of people of African descent. Some parts talk about reckoning and questions whether such will occur, who will remember, and will it matter and to whom.
El Akkad was born in Egypt, but grew up in Qatar and Canada as the family followed wherever his father was able to find work. He now lives in the US and states his current home is his 17th or 18th. His family had to move so much he remains uncertain.
This is a serious read for people who want to think about what has occurred in the last 20-30 years, what is occurring presently, and how all this will affect the future.
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.
Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basoalto, a country boy who grew up in a remote, rainy, forested area in southern Chile, an area called Araucania, an indigenous name, became Pablo Neruda, a name he created so he could publish poetry without his father’s knowledge. His father and mother, who died less than a month after his birth, originally came from the wine country of central Chile. His father became a conductor for a ballast train in this southern region. His descriptions of his childhood are of a shy boy who loved nature in all its forms and books. Later, he wrote letters to girls for his friends. Yet, he says he wrote his first poem when he had barely learned to read. Overcome with emotion, he wrote a poem to his stepmother, the only mother he knew. When he showed it to his father, his father asked to know what he had copied it from.
Later, he moves to Santiago to attend university, always poor, always wearing black, always carrying books. He joins a Student Federation and becomes acquainted with other young poets. He writes, “I saw a refuge in poetry with the intensity of someone timid.” After he struggled paying for the printing of his first book, he wrote, “…the writer’s task…must be a personal effort for the benefit of all.”
He wins a literary prize at school, his books are popular, and he finds himself acquiring a job at a Chilean consul in Rangoon but to get there he and a friend end up in France and Portugal, then Japan, then Singapore, before finally arriving at his destination. Thus, began his life as a consul official in places all over the world, including Spain just before and at the beginning of Franco’s rise to power.
After witnessing so much poverty, so many conflicts benefiting the rich, he becomes an avid supporter of the Chilean Communist Party–a form of communism unlike what most think of when they think of communism. The communism he and his friends support includes working on behalf of the poor, the common laborer, the disenfranchised against the wealthy elite who controlled most Latin American countries during his lifetime and in many cases still do.
He states, “I want to live in a world where beings are only human with no other title but that, without worrying their heads about rules, a word, a label…I want the great majority, the only majority, everyone, to be able to speak out, read, listen, thrive…I have taken a road because I believe that road leads us all to a lasting brotherhood…an inexhaustible goodness…”
Later, he chose to live at Isla Negra, a sort of hideout especially in winter where he could write. Then he returned to Chile. He helped his friend Salvatore Allende campaign for the presidency of Chile. After Allende became president, he appointed Neruda to be ambassador to France. In 1971, Neruda won the Nobel Prize. In 1972, the US blockaded Chile and Neruda returned and completed the final edit of his memoirs. He was welcomed back with a ceremony at the National Stadium in Santiago with a huge crowd in attendance. In 1973, a military coup, supported by the US, overturned the government and assassinated Allende. Less than one month later, Neruda died. Shortly thereafter, news spread worldwide that his two houses in different parts of Chile had been ransacked and vandalized by the new government and its forces.
Last week a writer friend commented on the notion that writers are known for wearing turtlenecks. That’s news to me even though I am a writer and I wear turtlenecks plus multiple layers. I’m cold. I’m cold at least half of the year even here in Southern California. This comment caused me to count mine. It seems I own 25 turtlenecks–white, off-white, various shades of beige and brown but none dark, several black, two red, two orange, two coral one of which one is darker than the other, two striped (one black and white, one tan and creme), deep green, two hot pink, and one sheer in shades of black and brown and creme and a sort of burgundy color. Another is a color I am not even sure how to describe which I will call pale peach. Since I’ve been the same size for decades, I am guessing some of these border on the ancient but not worn out. I never dry them in the dryer. Drying clothes in the dryer wears them out faster and changes their color.
About one-third of the way through his “Memoirs”, Pablo Neruda talks about a poet friend of his in Spain who wore turtlenecks which Neruda claims was a huge no-no at the time. What does he say poets should wear? Black from head to toe. He had been wearing black practically since birth. His mother died from tuberculosis a month after he was born. Perhaps the endless rain and endless mud he describes in the area of southern Chile where he grew up made wearing black the most practical color. Doubtless the poverty he witnessed as a young man working as a poor employee of tiny Chilean consulates in places like Ceylon (now SriLanka), Indonesia, and India did not inspire him to wear colorful clothes. Then not long after he arrives in Spain, Franco comes to power and one of his best friends, Federico Garcia Lorca is assassinated. As for me, when I am not wearing colorful clothes, I wear black, not due to rain or mud or sadness. The reason I am drawn to black mystifies me–another thing to ponder.
Not sure this qualifies as a turtleneck but it comes close.
People tell me I have a lot of determination. If they know about it, they use this example: I just finished my 659th day of walking at least 10,000 steps per day never missing a day. My average is over 13,000 but it was higher until the rain came. It forced me to dance, jog, and run in place inside my house, not exactly a fun endeavor.
Three years ago as part of a Story Circle Network class, I read about book written by a woman who read a book per day for a year in order to help her deal with her grief over the loss of young family member who died too soon. I figured if she could read a book a day, surely I could read a book per week. First year I made it, second I fell one short, and in 2025 I read 53 and reviewed them all on my blog.
Today, I finished book one off 2026: “We Are Green and Trembling” by the Argentinian writer Gabriela Cabezon Camara. It won the National Book Award for translated literature. A sort of fantastical, historical novel, it portrays the life of a real person, Antonio de Erauso. Now identifying as a man, he writes letters to his aunt who is the prioress of a Basque convent. When a small girl, his parents placed her in the convent hoping she would someday replace the aunt as head of the convent. To flee the narrow confines of such a life, she escapes and disguises herself as a man. Through his narration and letters to his aunt, he tells of all his adventures, including working as a mule skinner, then becoming a conquistador in South America among other endeavors. At the time of the novel, he has escaped the military captain for whom he fought and rescued two native Guarini girls from enslavement along with two monkeys. The smallest girl and the monkeys were in cages and near starvation when he rescued them. Pursued by the military they escaped, they now reside deep in the jungle aided by the natives who live there.
Through this novel, the author manages to criticize colonialism, the tyranny of strict religious beliefs, the treatment of women, and the horrors inflicted on native peoples.
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.
Published in the US in 1928, banned in England, this is the first, well known lesbian novel and without doubt one of the saddest books I have ever read. Hall was already an award winning and popular novelist when she decided to write this novel. The main character, Stephen Gordon, was born to upper class English parents. Her parents had hoped for a boy and chosen the name Stephen. When she was born a girl, they decided to call her Stephen anyway. From an early age, she was different and preferred to ride horses and do outside activities with her father who adored her rather than wear frilly dresses and do the activities common for English girls at the time. Her mother found all this off putting and never showed any love or nurturing toward her. Later in life, after an unpleasant incident with a young woman who uses Stephen as a distraction from her boring life, Stephen’s mother throws her out of the family home and she moves to London where she writes a highly successful novel.
During WWI, they are desperate for ambulance drivers and Stephen is assigned to an all female ambulance regiment in France. There she meets another young woman who becomes her lover.
An English friend, a successful playwright, convinces Stephen to move to Paris where there are no laws against homosexuality and where there is a large community of similar people, many of whom are highly successful in their careers. She and her lover live there for many years, and Stephen successfully continues her career as a writer. Then an old friend from her childhood shows up and everything changes.
This is the novel that shocked him by selling over a million copies and made him famous. It is the story of Toru, a young college student, whose two best friends from childhood change his life. One, his best male friend, commits suicide unexpectedly. Afterwards, the other friend, Naoko, a beautiful and mentally fragile young woman, and Toru spend their weekends just walking together all over Tokyo. As her mental health deteriorates, he increasingly falls in love with her and tries to help. Meanwhile, as Naoko becomes mentally more unstable, he meets another young woman, Midori, who is adventuresome, outgoing, and mentally stable. He does not want to give up on Naoko but is also drawn to Midori with whom he attends college.
The novel is written from the viewpoint of Toru. He tells not just about these women but also his very eccentric roommate at a dormitory and his friend, Nagasawa, who is very smart and disciplined but also quite immoral by Toru’s standards. Although the novel takes place in a Japan of several decades ago, Toru’s narrative and life seem quite modern and realistic.
One thing a reader from the US might notice is that all the characters go everywhere using public transportation. No cars are ever mentioned. Since several of the characters commit suicide, I decided to research the suicide rate in Japan. For decades the suicide rate of young people in Japan has been quite high and continues to be a concern there.
Although I am many decades older than all the main characters, I could not stop reading. This is a meaningful, very well written novel which I highly recommend. It is my second Murakami novel recently and I will read more.
Note: The version I read has the author’s notes from 2023 which are very informative and interesting. He apparently has to leave his home in Japan and go elsewhere, e.g. Greece, to write.
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