fantasy

Book 52 for 2025: “The City And Its Uncertain Walls, Haruki Murakami

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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.

Book 44 for 2025: “Kafka on the Shore”, Haruki Murakami

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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.

The Angel

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Can you call yourself a creative writer if you have not written a word in months? I have a friend who promotes 20 minutes of writing per day, telling people to just write, forget quality, just write. Really?! I care about quality. Perhaps too much? I make sure to read quality writing 99.99% of the time. Is this just words I am writing here or is it quality or garbage? You tell me!

One thing I can do is read. I’m good at reading. And singing. And gardening. I talk to plants; that’s why they grow for me. I truly care. They bring me peace and joy.

In the last two months, I’ve read three collections of short stories, two by Anthony Doerr and one by Gayle Jones. Normally, I am not a short story reader, but here I am reading these. Talk about different. It’s almost like these two famous writers inhabit different planets. Doerr’s stories seem intensely emotional, often a bit fantastical and heart wrenching with a lush, descriptive, poetic style even though Doerr is not a published poet. Jones is a published poet, yet her stories are blunt, conversational, often first person and sometimes short–one page short.

In many, a character is telling his or her (most of the stories are her) story about where they are, some experience, somebody they knew, what they did or said. In one story the narrator says she’s an angel, explains where she’s been, whom she’s known, and ends up by asking readers if they’ve seen her near the Seine. I doubt anyone mistakes me for an angel.

Note: Book 13 for 2025 is “Butter”, Gayle Jones. A collection of short stories.

Book Seven for 2025: “The Map of Salt and Stars”, Zeynab Joukhadar

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Two young heroines dominate this fascinating novel which switches back and forth between the Syria of 2011 and the 12th century. The latter is a girl who disguises herself as a boy to join the quest of a famous mapmaker. Nour, the first girl, lost her father to cancer in NYC. Then her mother, a mapmaker, decides to move herself and the three daughters back to Homs, Syria. They barely settle into their new life when the civil war breaks out and a bomb destroys their house. They become refugees. This is the tale of their harrowing journey from Syria to Jordan to Egypt to Libya to Algeria, then Morocco and finally to Cuenta, the Spainish city on the north coast of Africa, where their uncle lives.

To keep sane, Nour repeatedly tells herself the story of Rawiya, the disguised girl who is an apprentice to the map maker. When he was alive, this was the favorite traditional story her father told her. The book alternates between what is really occurring to Nour and her refugee family and this ancient story. At the beginning of the section for each country through which they travel, there is a touching and beautifully written poem in the shape of the map of that country. The poem for Jordan/Egypt is printed below.

Book Two for 2025: “Memory Wall Stories”, Anthony Doerr

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While wandering around in the library, I found this book. His two more recent novels, ” All the Light We Cannot See” and “Cloud Cuckoo Land” remain two of the most touching and fascinating novels I have ever read so decided to try what he started with, short stories. These stories do not disappoint.

The title of the book comes from the first of the stories. It is a combination of science fiction and paleontology. Via an operation to his head a young boy in South Africa possesses the memories of an old woman. Through her memories he learns of a her deceased husband’s interest in rocks and fossils. This allows him to make a discovery that changes lives. In the next story, due to the death of her parents, a young girl in Kansas has to move to Lithuania to live with her grandfather and makes a myth come true. The following story, “Village 113”, won the O. Henry Prize. It details what happens to one woman, a keeper of seeds for an entire village, when the Three Gorges Dam was built in China. Another story tells what happens to a couple in Wyoming when they desperately want a child but cannot conceive. The shortest of the stories, “The Demilitarized Zone”, is well about that–sort of. The final story, like several others, is about memory, in this case the memories of a Holocaust survivor, who like many who survive horrible events when others they know do not, wonders why her.

I liked these stories so much that I ordered his earlier collection of short stories, “The Shell Collector.” He has won the O. Henry Prize for short stories five times and the Pulitzer for “Cloud Cuckoo Land” in 2015. I keep wondering how he knows so much about so many places. His short stories and novels are set in countries all over the world. The research must never end.

Book 43 for 2024: “A Stranger in Olondria”, Sofia Samatar

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As a person who diligently never fails to finish a book I start, it is difficult to admit that I have finally failed to finish a book. I made it to Book Five and quit. Having already happily read two of this author’s other books, this failure comes as a surprise.

In this fantasy novel, the narrator’s quest to find the body of an illiterate girl from his own country (he has wandered far in search) whose ghost haunts his dreams became less and less appealing. Not sure why because I generally like fantasy novels. This novel does raise some interesting questions:

-Are burial/cremation practices so sacred that one must follow what is considered sacred in one’s culture or risk exile?

-Where is home?

Book 24 for 2024: “Inland”, Téa Obreht

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While I found her first book, “The Tiger’s Wife” fascinating, I remain uncertain regarding this one. First it is long, 374 pages (I do read long books); second, it tells two different stories which do not interconnect at all until the end of the book. I kept wondering, asking myself, “What?” For me at least, the story picked up about half way through and my interest greatly increased.

One storyline is the life of one homesteading family in rural Arizona in the 1850s told mostly from the viewpoint of the wife. Her husband tends to wander off for long periods of time leaving her on her own with their children. His latest adventure is not only their homestead but also owning and running the local newspaper in the nearest town. The reader also meets some rather powerful but unsavory characters who want to own all the cattle and all the land.

The second storyline deals with the men who were hired by the government to bring camels to the West and manage them, one of whose story–a real historical person–is told. His name was Ali, a Syrian cameleer, who died in 1902. He was called Hi Jolly because people in US seemed unable or unwilling to pronounce his real name correctly. This part is told from the viewpoint of another cameleer, Hi Jolly’s friend, who has a criminal history and is trying to elude the law. Camels were brought to the US by the United States Camel Corps in the 1850s. At that time few roads existed in the Southwest, water was scarce, and camels were known to be able to go long periods without water. The experiment failed so camels were left either in the hands of the individuals who rode and cared for them or left to roam wild. Some of the men, including Hi Jolly, were able to open businesses transporting goods to remote areas via camel. This book details part of that history.

In both storylines one recurring theme is the lack of water. At one point the homesteading family have no water at all. In the other storyline people hire the cameleers to take them to places not realizing that even camels need water occasionally. I find it telling that 175 years later we continue to struggle with water issues in exactly the same part of the country.

Octavia Butler’s Pasadena–Part One

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As part of a bookclub I co-host, we read Octavia Butler’s novel Kindred, a science fiction story which takes places in California and in the Old South. Since many of the bookclub members live in or near Pasadena, we decided we would do “Experience Butler’s Pasadena on Foot”, a walking loop of about 2.5 miles. We had planned to take the walk earlier in December but were rained out. We will reschedule early next year. I decided to do a dry run in November and took these photos along one of the streets where she often walked.

Butler lived most of her life in Pasadena but never owned a car. She either walked or took public transportation.

For those unfamiliar with her, she became famous as the first African American to win multiple Hugo and other science fiction awards. Born in 1947, she died in 2006, and is buried in a cemetery in Altadena, CA, just north of Pasadena. Many of her manuscripts are on display at The Huntington Library.

The last Octavia Butler book I read is the one illustrated in this photo taken at The Huntington Library. I am currently reading the sequel, Parable of the Talents. When I finish that one, I will have read all of her novels. She is one of my favorite authors.

Summer Reading

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IMG_3957Last year I joined Now Read This, the online bookclub sponsored by PBS and The New York Times.  Why did I join?  To expand my exposure to books I might not otherwise read, to learn, to explore, to interact with others reading the same books.

I rarely read fantasy or science fiction.  This summer has become an exception.  The June choice, The Fifth Season by Jemisin, won the Hugo in 2016.  The other two books in the trilogy won in 2017 and 2018.  I wanted to know what happened to the characters so I read them all.  The spine says Fantasy.  I think they are more science fiction.  Even people who claimed they did not like either fantasy or science fiction became like me and read them all.  This series tells a futuristic tale extremely applicable to events, both social and political, in the world today, how prejudice kills both overtly and covertly,  how fear of those who are different affect everyone, what it costs to live in a world where certain attitudes exist.

It took me two days to finish the July title even with chores, touchup house painting, all the things teachers attempt to do during summer break.  Although I had previously read at least three books by Luis Alberto Urrea, I had not read this one, The House of Broken Angels about a family who lives back and forth across the border–San Diego and Tijuana.  It is a tragic-comedy about the endurance, hopes, dreams, cooking, living of several generations.  His non-fiction book, The Devil’s Highway, is a must read for those who want to understand what occurs along the US-Mexico borderlands.

In the midst of all this, I went back and reread Ursula LeGuin’s The Left Hand of Darkness.  Wow, no wonder it caused a stir when it was published in the 1960s: a whole country where everyone switches back and forth between male and female and those who cannot do this are considered perverts.  Additionally, the main character is described as having very dark brown skin and those who do not behave exactly as they should or politically protest are sent off to a stark camp where they work in excessive cold and eventually die.

Then I read an article about Toni Morrison and authors who do not write for people based on a certain audience, e.g. black, white.  They write about what they know, what they feel, for a different purpose. One book listed was Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi, a fantasy, all of which takes place in what we now think of as Nigeria. It has not one single white character in it.  I kept thinking, wow.  I read a lot of literature from Africa, Middle East, and Latin America.  Most of the time, for better or worse, characters from other cultures show up, usually European and usually for the worse.  Not in this one.  If you go to a book store looking for it, look in Young Adult.  Jemisin’s can be found in Adult Science Fiction/Fantasy.  When I mentioned to someone I could not tell why some are categorized one way and some another, I was told there is less graphic sex in YA.  Really?  I cannot tell the difference.

Next on my list?  I annually act as a judge in a literary contest.  Three novels arrived in yesterday’s mail.  Guess I need to get busy.