My Gift to You (aka wonderful books you should know about!)

I’m overwhelmed by all of the support y’all showed on my post yesterday. At this point, I know I should expect it, but I still found myself with tears in my eyes just contemplating the level of kindness our little corner of the blogosphere operates at. I’ll be answering each of your comments individually soon (I just caught up on replying to comments from June!), but for now I thought I’d tell you about the best books I’ve read and not yet discussed here. Hopefully, you’ll find a book to fall in love with, and that’s the best way I can think of to repay you all. :)

For the cosy mystery/historical fiction fan: if you haven’t heard of Anna Dean’s Bellfield Hall yet…you need to run, not walk, to your nearest bookstore or library! It’s a closed house mystery set in a country estate during the Georgian Era featuring Dido Kent, a spinster aunt visiting at the request of her niece, whose engagement is suddenly in trouble. The puzzle mystery aspect is marvelous…Dean drops just the right amount of clues, and I had great fun picking my suspect (I was right!). And Dido is great fun…here’s an excerpt from a letter to her sister early in the novel:

Meanwhile, her ladyship sits upon her sofa and wrings her hands and declares that ‘one does not know what to hink’; hoping, I suppose, that someone will tell her what to think and so save her the trouble of forming an opinion of her own.

The setting is wonderfully brought to life, and Dean’s writing is marvelous…light without being fluffy, if that makes sense (to be fair, I found it a bit rocky in the beginning, but by page 50 it was all smooth sailing). My only complaint is that this is Dean’s debut novel! I cannot wait for her next book to release, and just writing about Bellfield Hall makes me want to run out and reread it! Perfect comfort reading….best accompanied by a cup of tea and some thunderstorms. ;)

For those who enjoy their fiction quirky and touching: Twinkle Twinkle by Kaori Ekuni is one of the most affecting novels I’ve read in a long time. The narration alternates between chapters, which I find a difficult thing to pull off, but Ekuni does it perfectly. Our first narrator is Shoko, a young-ish Japanese woman who has agreed to a marriage of convenience with Mutsuki. She’s an alcoholic with serious depression, and her voice is so pitch perfect that almost every page had me in tears (I mean that in the best way). Here’s a taste:

By the time I realised what I was doing, I had thrown everything I could lay my hands on at Mutsuki. Teapot, Tea strainer. CDs. Watering can. Tea cozy. Mints. Paperbacks. My tears were flowing freely now, as I hurled one thing after another in his direction. I could hear myself bawling. He was like a little hedgehog, his honesty standing up like tiny prickles. He wasn’t afraid to speak the truth. I was scared to death of it, of course. As far as I understood, words weren’t there for telling the truth. I felt heartbroken. What had I ever gotten married? Why did I have to like Mutsuki so much?

Mutsuki is our other narrator, and he’s been in a relationship with a man for years now. Their relationship is certainly unusual, but it feels so true…they both care about each other so deeply, even if not in a sexual way, and their little triumphs and disasters in trying to make each other happy were all so important to me as I was reading it. I find it hard to explain just how much this book got under my skin, but I truly urge you to read it. Also, there’s a lot of humour and insights into Japanese culture that are the cherries on top! I’m just sad that this is the only Ekuni novel my library has (it’s the only one translated into English)…I hope more of her works become available to English speakers soon. (Also, if this convinced you but you don’t have much reading time, it’s less than 200 pages…so a quick treat.)

For the news junkies: now you know that my international relations nerdiness would come out soon! ;) For y’all I have a double-feature. First is the just-released Everything is Broken by Emma Larkin. I adored her first book about Burma (Finding George Orwell in Burma), and this follow-up confirmed my love for her. It’s centered around the Nargis tragedy, but it’s about so much more than that. Larkin provides so many insights and stories into Burmese culture, and she does it in a way that’s both international relations-y AND literary. That’s a difficult combination to find! ;) Meanwhile Alma Guillermoprieto essay collection The Heart that Bleeds is fascinating in part of its age…the essays were written in the late 80s and early 90s, and comparing the Latin America of then to the one of now added an extra dimension for me. Especially the essays on Colombia! Guillermoprieto’s viewpoint as a Mexican intellectual made me trust her, and since her essays were all originally published in The New Yorker she provides enough context and background for a North American like me to always understand. And her writing is at the level you’d expect for The New Yorker! This is a pretty thick book, but it was a delight to dip into…each essay was self-contained and the perfect length.

For those who love a good family saga: A Long, Long Time Ago and Essentially True by Brigid Pasulka has two storylines, both set in Poland, about the same family through three generations. The stories are entertwined perfectly, and both the rural village life of pre-WWII and resistance Poland as well as the Krakow of post-Communist Poland are beautiful rendered. Pasulka is an American, but she moved to Poland in the 90s and now speaks the language and all that. ;) One of my favourite little things in international fiction is when there’s just enough of the foreign language mixed in to give it flavour…Pasulka strikes that balance perfectly (also, as a Russian student, it was great fun to compare the Polish and Russian!). The story looks not only at the importance of family but also of stories and how we shape our lives with the things we tell. I can’t say it’s a perfect book…there are a couple moments in the plot that seemed unnecessary except for the sadness factor, but it’s a compulsively readable, enchanting book which is marvelous despite those two flaws. The writing style is just so perfect…here’s the opening:

The Pigeon was not one to sit around and pine, and so the day after he saw the beautiful Anielica Hetmanska up on Old Baldy Hill, he went to talk to her father.

The Pigeon’s village was two hills and three valleys away, and he came upon her only by Providence, or “by chance,” as some would start to say after the communists and their half-attemps at secularization.

I dare you not to want to read more! ;) It’s also a story focused primarily around strong women, which as you imagine scores extra points for me!

For those who read graphic books for the artwork as much as the writing: The Principles of Uncertainty by Maira Kalman is almost indefinable in the best sense of the word! It’s Kalman’s journal over a year, and it’s full of the most random thoughts, both banal and profound, with the most beautiful sketches and photographs. It’s one of those books that you can spend as long as you want reading it, because each page could become a meditation. As y’all know, I’m not the most covetous of readers, but I immediately went to Amazon to check the price of the trade paperback edition, and you can bet it’ll top my Christmas wishlist this year. It’s a very human book, and one I can’t imagine a reader not connecting with. Even if graphic books make you a bit nervous, do give this one a go. You can see her addictive art style in her blog for the NYT.

For those who swoon over lyrical writing: it’s a shame that Green Mountain, White Cloud by Francois Cheng is out of print (despite a relatively recent publication date). This is a lovely novel with a definite fable flavour, and Cheng’s beautiful writing takes center stage, along with an exploration of love and sex and how we experience them. I loved every second I spent with this one, but I realise it won’t be everyone…those who love plots above everything else will probably be bored. Here’s a taste of the writing…it should be easy to decide for yourself if this is your style:

She opened the palm of her hand and let him press his to it. It was a silent moment of communion, of wordless ecstasy. The intimacy born of these two hands was as when two faces approach, or two hearts are imprinted upon each other. When the corolla of give petals unfolds, like a glove being turned inside out it delivers up its secret depths, letting itself be nourished by the warm breeze, or bounced by eager butterflies and honeybees that light upon it. Between two hands with fingers interlaced a fluttering of wings produced a tin shudder, the slightest pressure a wave that expanded in radiating circles. What one hand caressed was not simply another hand by the very caress of the other.

The book is framed as a story-within-a-story, a bit like The Name of the Rose, which I thought was a lovely final touch. ;)

For those who always think they really should be reading more nonfiction: The Thoughtful Dresser by Linda Grant is a just-released (in the US) book based on columns Grant has written over the years. It’s a book about clothes and humanity and how the two relate. ;) I could tell you what a powerful writer Grant is, but instead I’m just going to ask you to read the first chapter, available for free (that link is to a PDF file). After reading that, I stalked my library catalogue to be first on the list to get the book, and I wasn’t disappointed. Except for a subpar chapter on post 9/11, the entire book was one delight after another. This would be a perfect Women Unbound selection too! ;) Plus, look at that cover: how can you resist?!

I hope one of these caught your eye: they were all delicious reads for me, and I think they will be for you as well!