acquisitions and reviews

Hope everyone had a nice weekend! Easter is a big holiday in Switzerland so we had both Friday and Monday off – lots of time for visiting family and reading. We’ve had quite a bit of cold weather and snow, so our first weekend of spring was rather white!  

Well, after my last post about wanting some new books I figured it was time to dash over to my favorite secondhand shop in Lausanne – the one that sells books for 4 Swiss francs / kilo. I love this shop! And I managed to come away with some wonderful new books last week: 

Ayn Rand – The Fountainhead. My book group is reading this for next week and I had taken it out from the library. I finished it last week and think it’s a book I’d like to read again. So I was delighted to find a copy at the shop and snatched it right up. 

Alan Garner – The Owl Service. Imani introduced me to this book although I suspect Ann at Table Talk has read it as well. I saw it on the shelf and couldn’t resist. I read it the night I brought it home. What a unique little story. I was quite surprised at how dark the book actually was and I enjoyed that, but I couldn’t help feeling things wrapped up a little too quickly. The story could have easily handled a bit more ‘story’.  

James Baldwin – Blues for Mister Charlie. I’ve been an admirer of James Baldwin for quite some time. His short story Sonny’s Blues is one of the most beautiful pieces of fiction I think I’ve ever read. I can’t wait to settle down with this some night this week. 

Mary Doria Russell – The Sparrow. Imagine my surprise at finding this book on the very day I read Ann’s post on another Russell where she mentions this as one of her very favorite books. That’s enough of a recommendation for me – and I’m very much looking forward to “meeting” Russell. 

I also came away with five other splendid gems, quite enough to keep me out of trouble for awhile:

• John Cheever – Oh, What a Paradise it Seems
• Arthur Miller – Death of a Salesman
• Willa Cather – Death Comes to the Archbishop
• Iris Murdoch – Bruno’s Dream
• Edith Wharton – The Age of Innocence 

On Sunday afternoon I finished Nadine Gordimer’s third novel Occasion for Loving which she wrote in 1963. I know I tend to go on and on about her but I’ve decided once and for all that I have more respect for her than any other novelist. There are writers who are stylistically more flashy, more daring or who carry you along inside their story with more energy but where Gordimer impresses me again and again is in the way she exposes human thought, emotion and reaction. On nearly every page, in just two or three sentences, she lays open some fact about human existence and as a reader you can’t help but nod your head and say, “yes, that’s exactly what that feels like,” even if its something you may not have experienced on your own. She finds words for the things we don’t even realize there are words for. She’s brilliant. I’m going to write about Occasion for Loving separately sometime this week. 

I also want to sit down and write some kind of response to The Fountainhead. On the one hand, reading this novel felt a bit like watching some highly intellectual soap opera – all those weighty pauses, machinations, temptations and dueling ideals. At one point I put the book down and just thought – oh, get over it people, get a grip, taking yourself that seriously all the time is just, well, annoying. But on another level, there were many things about Rand’s philosophy I enjoyed thinking about, and from different perspectives – as a woman, as an American and in the most general way, as a member of a society. I don’t want to give the impression that I took the book lightly or am scoffing at it in any way. I’d like to take more time to really think about Objectivism as presented in the novel and what it would mean in practice. This type of existential philosophy merits careful consideration

Well, it’s only Tuesday and already I’m terribly excited about what this week’s reading should bring – I’m finishing Steven Millhauser’s Martin Dressler, will savor a few more chapters of The Iliad, am hoping to get started on Rosy Thornton’s Hearts and Minds and will finally start Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go.