A thoughtful and stirring mixture of dignity, humanity, and quirkiness
582049
I read Hugh Ashton's Tales of Old Japanese in one sitting last night. As a fan of the films of Ozu Yasujinro, I have a fondness for stories about a certain generation of Japanese -- those who came out of World War II as adults and experienced the transition in Japanese society to its present peaceful, capitalized, industrialized iteration. Ashton, a 24-year-resident of Japan, knows this generation well and has crafted a novella-length collection of fictional stories inspired by his experience. Some of the stories are more plotted, some more snapshots, but all of them reflect in a thoughtful and stirring fashion the mixture of dignity, humanity, and quirkiness belonging not just to old Japanese, but to the elderly in general. I especially like "Haircuts," in which a 92-year-old man strikes up a friendship with a young divorcee working in a barbershop. I would have been happy for this story to go on a long time and add many layers of complexity.. Also on my list of favorites is "Mrs. Sakamoto's Grouse," in which a older lady becomes stubbornly and financially attached to a dying bird in a small zoo because it is similar to one on the label of a whiskey bottle. What might seem obvious -- older person aware of being near death becomes attached to an animal that is near death -- is done with humanity and subtlety. These two stories would be suitable for me to use in my role as a classroom teacher, as they have complexity, clarity, and interest and deal with universal themes.

All these stories are good. Hugh Ashton, with whom I am slightly acquainted, is mainly known for writing Sherlock Holmes stories -- but if he were to write more like this, I would definitely be pleased to buy it.
153185
In this thoughtful, funny, complex novel, Katherine Taylor tackles the big themes: money, family, identity, and loss.  Her style is so subtle, her voice so funny and direct,  its easy to miss the depth and intricacies of her themes  but serious readers will be rewarded.

After suffering a series of major life setbacks, Ingrid Palamede finds herself homeless, penniless, and emotionally wrecked.  She returns to the small town of her childhood because she has no place else to go, but also to reset herself, to find some kind of direction and identity.  What she finds is that the polished veneer of her parents life and the familys successful ranching enterprise has begun to crack, and within those cracks Ingrid begins to discover the source of her stunted adulthood, whats contributed to her lifes weightlessness.

Taylors voice is the thing here (as it was in her excellent first novel, as well):  as funny and engaging as emails from your closest, most intelligent friend, but with an underlying sadness and sense of loss that makes the humor almost devastating.

I waited almost ten years for Katherine Taylors second book.  It was worth it.
3779441
This is a George Eliot novel, which means it has beautifully crafted sentences and eloquent language, and thematically it has a stong moral center.  The moral dilemna of Maggie, who is semi-promised to one man and who has very reluctantly fallen for another, set up a tension between duty--what we owe to others through our promises and responsibilities and love for them -- and desires -- what we want for ourselves.  The book holds to the conventions of the 19th century Victorian novel in many ways, keeping it from the level of Eliot's masterpieces, Middlemarch and Silas Marner.  But in its vision and moral wisdom, that the real joy of life is to be found in keeping our faith with those we love and not always pursuing our immediate pleasures, the novel satisfies in that special "George Eliot way," maturely and thoughtfully.  This is a wonderful novel.
1502829
Mehreen Ahmeds Snapshots is a humanistic stroll through cities and villages of both the past and present. As she travels from place to place, from one continent to the next, she draws on literary and artistic history to explore the surroundings that in turn inspire their artists. Written as more than a travelogue, these essayistic ramblings are filled with lush moments of human experience, struggles with language, lessons in history, and descriptions of the aesthetic backdrop in which we live. From ambitious taxi drivers to mothers with sleeping children to suspicious train attendants, Ahmed observes behavior through the lens of a wanderer and student of Humanism. But her finest moments are those most personal, such as the thrill she gets sitting across from Shakespeares cottage, or the pleasure she experiences inhaling the perfume of the gardens of generalife in Al-Hambra, or her dalliances with friends in Ottawa, or the nausea she endures while on a glass-bottom boat in Cairns. A personal travel diary of sorts, Ahmeds work will not disappoint.

I was given a copy of "Snapshots" in exchange for a fair and honest review.
400351
A thoughtful meditation on the compromises demanded in (a woman's) life for the achievement of both artistic and humanistic success.
484989
I enjoyed this book, even if at first, I wondered if the main conceit, that Death could narrate a novel.  What at first I thought was a hook developed into a character that I followed as much as the human subjects of the story.  This is not a spoiler: everyone dies, except Death.  It is the grace and humanity that each of the characters is drawn with that compels me to recommend this book.  There is something satisfying with having a narrator connected to the stories in such an unusually intimate, yet removed way. That particular quality of the novel is difficult to explain, but I will probably re-read the book to define it more clearly.

The main character, the thief herself, is someone who steals books, even when she is not literate herself.  It's a powerful metaphor for some of the reaching behaviors that she and other characters engage in throughout the novel.  There is a deep need for knowledge, for control, for compassion, and for family that often results in tragedy,  Like a classic tragedy, each of those elements are double-edged for the characters.

For those who may be concerned it's a macabre book, it's not - it just doesn't ignore some of humans' most unpleasant traits, but the mirror that is held up is under if not a flattering light, but a compassionate one.
3519458
Created from a jumble of non-narrative forms--from anecdote to glossary to literary criticism to timetable--Flaubert's Parrot is a showcase of postmodern fiction and its devices. What makes it so special and so rich is its central character, or rather the respect and sensitivity Julian Barnes brings to the creation of that character. In many ways, the pyrotechnical brilliance that shapes Flaubert's Parrot can be seen as an ingenious method of description created for the sole purpose of NOT belittling the novel's central character, Geoffrey Braithwaite. Much like Flaubert, Barnes champions the butt of jokes. But where Flaubert could only see unhappy endings, Barnes finds it in his heart to imagine Geoffrey Braithwaite a meaningful if eccentric survival. No cynicism, no surprise endings, just a firm and gentle belief that acceptance is a measured life's crucial virtue and a life story to prove it. I'm not so sure that I love Geoffrey Braithwaite after reading Flaubert's Parrot, but I adore Julian Barnes for taking his side. In doing so, he gently proposes that the interconnected narratives of life and art find ways to sustain each other in the humblest of circumstances and through the least auspicious among us.
2687102
Very creative and thoughtful,  an enjoyable ride
3031589
I have long believed that a good novel is one of the best tools we humans have developed, for exploring the peculiar, convoluted and often outrageous mystery that makes up what we call life.
And in my view Glenn Robitaille has done a masterful job in this barn-burner of a book --"In Praise Of Uncertainty."
At the heart of the dialogues that make up the tale, is the age-old quest for what we think and feel to be "certainty".  As the reader follows these dialogues he\she will be intrigued and challenged to reconfigure familiar, accustomed, taken for granted interpretations pertaining to faith, friendship, work, religion, social status, and a host of other things that make up what we call "life".
Most critical of all is the challenge on each page to seriously reflect  on what we can think and feel is CERTAIN -- beyond all doubt and challenge.
In his preface the Author warns the reader that the conversations are drawn from real people, and real encounters, and that is the "energy" that enlivens the process.  And enliven it does -- sometimes in ways that shock, delight, astonish, and confront with uncomfortable alternatives of perception.
Sometimes the reader will simply laugh out loud at the perlexing and ridiculous  image we humans present when we too easilly take as a given , that which in fact is always the genuine mystery that lies at the heart of life as it unfolds.
I have read this novel four times, and with each reading I discover new aspects that cause me to pause, reflect, reconsider and reconfigure dynamics that escaped my perception at the first read.
That to me is what a good book  does --and this novel does it in manner that is superb.
3550678
This thin but substantial volume that locates the phiolosophy of Fethullah Gulen within that strand of the philosophical tradition which is generally characterized as humanism is compelling in its style and universal in its appeal.  Caroll compares, and contrasts, where required, the religiously grounded humanism of Gulen with the secular humanistic ideas of Kant, Mill, Plato, Confucius, and Sartre.  Stepping lightly on the metaphysical underpinnings of these perspectives, the author weaves together the common strands found in their writings into a fabric that supports and affirms the dignity of human beings everywhere, regardless of their historical location, cultural diversity, or social context.  Kant's rationalist articulation of humanism that calls for the treatment of each individual as an end in itself rather than as a means toward another end finds its reformulation in Gulen in an inspiring way when he combines reason with love and spiritual depth.  As Caroll rightly points out, although Gulen is unwilling to concede that the light of human reason is sufficient unto itself to show us the way out of our pursuit of self-interest and the tangled web of divisiveness, his proposal for a sincere dialogue among civilizations and religions has a timeless and universal appeal.  I am pleased to recommend this book to anyone who is in a leadership position or who is simply seeking reflective understanding of what it is to be a human being in our own times.

- Mathew Kanjirathinkal, Ph. D.,
1926382
Like Ethan Frome and Age of Innocence, Brideshead Revisited features sympathetic but heartbreakingly human protagonists, possessing both grace and flaws, placed in a setting rife with rigid societal/religious constraints and then forced to choose between societal/religious conformity or personal happiness. I keep hoping the protagonists will choose personal happiness, but they never do.

[WARNING: TONS OF SPOILERS!] This novel features a trio of perhaps the most charismatic and tragic protagonists in literary history: gay, tormented Sebestian Flyte, his beautiful sister Julia, and family friend Charles Ryder. In Age of Innocence, its the rigid constructs of society that eventually bruise and break the characters. In this outing, Catholicism is the wall against which each character, one after another, tragically dashes themselves: first, Sebestians father, trapped by Catholicism in a loveless marriage; next, his heartbreakingly fragile son Sebastian, trying desperately to repress his homosexuality; after that Julia, who tragically discovers her love for Charles after she has married another; and finally Charles who, though a non-believer, is swept up by the tide of Marchmont tragedy and himself broken.

All of which would have you thinking of this story as rampantly anti-Catholic, except that Waugh was himself a convert to Catholicism and, accordingly, ensures that each character, though deprived of earthly happiness, ultimately rescues their hope of ultimate grace. Even Charles, the skeptic and non-believer, has by the end of the tale begun to pray. Which, I suppose, is meant to provide consolation of a sort, though not enough to keep me from tearing up throughout the final chapters.

Provided you can deal with all the tragedy, theres much in this novel to admire and, yes, to love. The writing is gorgeous. The evocation of period is brilliant. And each of the three protagonists is hauntingly memorable  especially Sebestian, whose transformation from dazzlingly charismatic schoolboy to gentle but ravaged alcoholic adulthood is wholly riveting.

You know how some books don't seem particularly notable at the time but as the years pass you come gradually to comprehend their wisdom and insight? I have a feeling this is going to be one of those books, and that Waughs insights into faith, duty, loyalty, morality, beauty, friendship and love are destined to haunt me for years to come.
2645843
Arjun is the character to whom the reader is closest and into whose soul the reader sees most deeply. I admire that Arjun is flawed, that Hunter portrays him in what I think is an honest and brave take on a father figuresomeone who loves too late, but he loves. This is how life is: glorious failure. Arjun is an unromanticized portrait of a good man very much of our civilization as it stands in 2014.

The ending is apt, surprising and moving all at the same timeand its redeeming. Hunter has managed to give a full sense of modern Indian immigrant and first generation life and at the same time make that complex set of issues pertinent to many immigrant communities. The longing, frustration, anger and deep love the parents experience for each other and for their children define parenting in the most specific and universal wayits what so many novelists try to do by being detailed and specific, but its where so many novelists fail. One might give a class using Hunters novel as a model for that.

Some of my favorite language includes:

"Somewhere he feels a longing shift and tilt its anchor inside him, and his age settles into his bones."

"It doesnt matter. He loves her ignorance, her wide-ranging prejudices, her quick judgement of other people, her feelings of inadequacy, her suspicion of those who she feels are somehow better, her inability to follow a simple argument or even clear driving directions, her instinctive dislike of anything artistic, including art. He loves her sad walls of exclusion, including those that shut her out from anything that might demand a little understanding outside of the terrible moral code by which she attempts, and often fails, to live."
3609863
This book of essays is crucial, brilliant, relevant, and thought-provoking. The author is a British medical doctor who has been everywhere and seen the worst that humanity has to offer in his travels and work in prisons and slum hospitals. He does not mince his words, which are cutting and merciless but highly intelligent and perceptive.

The book is divided into two broad sections; Arts & Letters, and Society & Politics. While some pieces serve as insightful analyses on such topics as Shakespeare, Stefan Zweig, Havana's decay and the 'cits' in Paris, a broad theme undergirds the totality of the essays: the recognition that civilization is slipping away, including all the cultural and ethical standards that go with it.

Dalrymple attacks both the increasingly amoral society in which he lives, and the deconstructionist post-modern intellectuals who not only stand non-judgmentally in the face of evil, but  seem to bask in it, exploiting all that is depraved and destructive. He writes what he feels, and calls it as he sees it, unafraid of being assaulted like some of the people he describes.

Parts of this book are really upsetting and at times, emotionally difficult to read, but that is exactly what Dalrymple wants to elicit in his audience. If we find the rape, abuse, neglect and murder of children abhorent, perhaps there is hope for us after all.
3375802
This is an almost impossibly beautiful book about abandonment and belonging, loneliness and love, baptism and birth. It has the pyschological depth of Dostoevsky, dialogue worthy of Shakespeare and (explicitly) the resonance of the Bible. It has an extraordinary depth of humanity. It has to be a movie, you have to read it, it should win the highest accolade. It will salt up your reading glasses (if you wear them) but go for it.
1124777
Walker Percy was a shrewd observer of culture: locally in the South of his birth, more broadly in the western world of the late 20th century. The author's pessimism speaks broadly of decline and loss; yet in the midst of it all, his protagonist clings to hope. Why? Rather than resolving our questions, this book raises them in tribute and salute. This book will linger in your awareness.
1141483
This gentle, moving book has many lovely symmetries: as Harold moves forwards, his memories work backwards; the growing physical distance from his wife slowly heals the emotional distance between them. The tender observations of life are deliciously written, and the reader is drawn to see the beauty of the ordinary and flawed. In the end, simple human connections are the conduits to redemption.
2859468
In "A Replacement Life" (for convenience, ARL) author Fishman has given us a little world, compassed in a bit over 300 pages, in which characters, families, neighborhoods, faiths, and historical forces live and interact with varied and sometimes obscure(d) motivations and intentions, and with sometimes surprising results--just as happens in what we are pleased to call real life. The book is a product of solid craftsmanship and painstaking care, yet flows along neatly, without the smell of the lamp (but for one small indulgence to be noted later). As a narrative, ARL occupies a happy ground between formulaic Steinbeckian progressions and allusive Proustian labyrinths. It is not difficult to follow, although it does demand attention from the reader. The plot moves resolutely forward in time, but Time's Arrow darts lightly forward, backward, and sideways as characters' dialogue and actions advance the plot.
The protagonist, Slava, is something of a sporadically energized Bartleby the Scrivener: he would prefer not to be drawn into composing individually false but communally truthful accounts of lives snared by war and Holocaust, but he does, and finds his constructions carrying him to a thought-provoking resolution with a compensation agent of the Federal Republic of Germany.
The character sketch of the tough, canny, streetwise grandfather is worth the price of admission. Fishman has made him much more than a voice-balloon sidekick or comic companion. Grandfather trails a history and carries a bag of intentions that unfold gradually, but never appear to be fully disclosed. Other characters--relatives, friends, Slava's ladies--also appear as distinct individuals rather than page puppets.
The one small perturbation in the reading experience (for some, at least) may be the author's decision to drop snippets of admired prose and poetry (listed and sourced in ARL's endnotes) into his narrative. Some fit neatly into the passing scenery; others call attention to themselves by creating a bump in context, like encountering a ruby in your borscht.
The greatest art displayed in ARL is Fishman's artful interweaving of personal plotlines into broader issues of history, truth, and justice. They appear not as didactic hectoring by a narrator or as the kind of tedious speeches Ayn Rand characters are won't to unleash upon one another, but as natural outgrowths of characters' interactions. Result: a novel that can be read as fairly light entertainment, but also as a thoughtfully induced meditation.
Meanwhile, the embryo of a good screenplay is kicking at the walls of ARL, yearning to get out.
All in all, very nice. Let's have another.