Day 1: Ficciones, by Jorge Luis Borges.Seventeen little gems. This copy is the very one I discovered on my parent's bookshelves in about 1965. Translated by Anthony Kerrigan. (There are some subpar translations out there).
Day 2: If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, by Italo Calvino. This falls in the "If you liked Borges, you'll like this" category. Entertaining, allegorical and subtle. You'll get used to the second person writing, wherein the author talks directly to you, the reader, about this new book you've just encountered at the local bookshop. You're sure to like it, it's by that famous Italian author Italo Calvino. At the beginning of Chapter 2, "you have now read about thirty pages and you're becoming caught up in the story." Self-referential and post-modern in a way only the Simpsons have managed at the mass media level, but with much higher literary values. No cowabungas here. Translated by William Weaver.
Day 3: Foucault's Pendulum, by Umberto Eco. Absurdities of the whole conspiracy theorist thing. Eco can be a bit of a showoff, flinging about literary allusions to everyone from Shakespeare to Borges with wild abandon. Another of his novels was littered with references to Borges, and while I felt smart having noticed them, I realised there were probably references to ten or twenty more authors that I had missed. But cut him some slack and dive into this hilarious review of Knights Templar, Rosicrucians and all the wingnuts surrounding them today. You won't regret it. Translated by William Weaver, who also translated my copy of Calvino.
Day 4: A Scanner Darkly, by Philip K. Dick. It's hard
to pick just one book of his, partly because I haven't read them all (he
was nothing if not prolific). This one was made into a superb movie of
the same name, and I picked it partly because his other movie, based on
the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, is better known to the
public. (That movie was called Blade Runner). While this might
seem like a major shift from previous suggestions, Dick's brand of
darkly allegorical and dystopic surrealism reminds me of Eco, Calvino or
Borges. Thing is, a lot of Dick's allegories have come to pass in one
way or another.
Day 5: Protector, by Larry Niven. Yes, Ringworld is more famous (and is a cracking good story to boot) but Protector shows Niven at his best: Phssthpok is an alien who is completely internally consistent but, well, completely alien. Also, the space battle sequence respects concepts of travel at relativistic speeds and conservation of momentum, and thus takes place over several months. The lack of sizzle makes it hard to convert something like that into a Star Wars movie, but this is how it would play out in the absence of an FTL drive (Faster Than Light, for the uninitiated).
Day 6: Journey Into Fear by Eric Ambler. Many of Ambler's lead characters are Joe Anyone caught up in something they didn't ask for and for which they are not prepared or equipped. In this thriller written in 1940, a bookish British munitions expert with a PhD in ballistics travels to Istanbul to advise the Turkish military on upgrading their naval guns. On the way home it becomes obvious someone wants him dead. Very well done, and very Hitchkockian, although the movie was made by someone else. Sadly Ambler is mostly out of print these days, so if you see anything by him, grab it. He was an excellent writer.
On a personal
note: In another of his prewar books in the same vein, a young engineer
gets a job with a munitions firm. Asked why he's doing it when it all
will only be used to slaughter his compatriots in the fairly near
future, he says something along the lines of if I don't do it, someone
else will, and I need the job. That line was on my mind as I picked a
career path after getting my engineering degree.
Day 7: The IPCRESS File, by Len Deighton. This book features superb writing and provides a lovely antidote to Ian Fleming's James Bond franchise: the unnamed protagonist works out of a seedy office suite on the third floor of a building surrounded by strip clubs. When he rips his trousers climbing a fence, he worries his expense claim, which is already three months late since he changed department, won't cover it. When he needs backup, he gets an aging private eye driving a Ford Anglia. But the plot and pacing are excellent. Deighton wrote three sequels, of which Funeral in Berlin is the best.
Day 8: Cocaine Nights, by J.G. Ballard. Some of you will know of my fondness for Ballard. For more, see my blog post (here) and scroll to the bottom.
Day 9: Two books by Bernard Atxaga. Yes, I am cheating a bit here, but bear with me. Basque literature is very lean, given the language is spoken by very few people, and that it was actively suppressed by many Spanish governments, Franco's being only the most recent one. I have seen statements along the lines of only 100 novels (or books) have been written in Basque in the last four centuries. Regardless, these two books are very rare translations of very rare books, and were translated to English in two stages: from Basque to Spanish by Asun Garikano and the author, and from Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa.
The first one, Obabakoak, introduces the Basque back country in a series of linked short stories set in the town of Obaba. (According to Wikipedia, the title tranlsates roughly as "individuals and things of Obaba"). The writing is gentle, ironic and not a little fatalistic.
The Accordionist's Son is a coming of age novel. Lordy how I hate those words on the cover of a book! Usually I'll run the other way when I see them. But this one is very good and also provides some understanding of the impact of the Spanish Civil War and the Fascist era on small-town Basque country, which is rugged, remote and difficult to travel even today, especially on the Spanish side of the border.
Day 10: A Man called Ove, by Fredrik Backman. Translated by Henning Koch. A very touching story that somehow launched itself off the shelf and into my arms in a local bookstore earlier this spring. Ove is the perfect curmudgeon, and you can see the fondness people around him have for him even if they are only seen through his eyes. Very touching.
So there you have it. 10 (OK, 11) books covering a range of styles and genres. Let's see yours.
Day 7: The IPCRESS File, by Len Deighton. This book features superb writing and provides a lovely antidote to Ian Fleming's James Bond franchise: the unnamed protagonist works out of a seedy office suite on the third floor of a building surrounded by strip clubs. When he rips his trousers climbing a fence, he worries his expense claim, which is already three months late since he changed department, won't cover it. When he needs backup, he gets an aging private eye driving a Ford Anglia. But the plot and pacing are excellent. Deighton wrote three sequels, of which Funeral in Berlin is the best.
Day 8: Cocaine Nights, by J.G. Ballard. Some of you will know of my fondness for Ballard. For more, see my blog post (here) and scroll to the bottom.
Day 9: Two books by Bernard Atxaga. Yes, I am cheating a bit here, but bear with me. Basque literature is very lean, given the language is spoken by very few people, and that it was actively suppressed by many Spanish governments, Franco's being only the most recent one. I have seen statements along the lines of only 100 novels (or books) have been written in Basque in the last four centuries. Regardless, these two books are very rare translations of very rare books, and were translated to English in two stages: from Basque to Spanish by Asun Garikano and the author, and from Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa.
The first one, Obabakoak, introduces the Basque back country in a series of linked short stories set in the town of Obaba. (According to Wikipedia, the title tranlsates roughly as "individuals and things of Obaba"). The writing is gentle, ironic and not a little fatalistic.
The Accordionist's Son is a coming of age novel. Lordy how I hate those words on the cover of a book! Usually I'll run the other way when I see them. But this one is very good and also provides some understanding of the impact of the Spanish Civil War and the Fascist era on small-town Basque country, which is rugged, remote and difficult to travel even today, especially on the Spanish side of the border.
Day 10: A Man called Ove, by Fredrik Backman. Translated by Henning Koch. A very touching story that somehow launched itself off the shelf and into my arms in a local bookstore earlier this spring. Ove is the perfect curmudgeon, and you can see the fondness people around him have for him even if they are only seen through his eyes. Very touching.
So there you have it. 10 (OK, 11) books covering a range of styles and genres. Let's see yours.
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