I guess I’ve been in a vacation mood this summer… as I realize I simply forgot to post the “Books of the Month” for July… and that’s not because the July reading list was disappointing. I found several gems including
- Little Bee, the stunningly told story of a Nigerian would-be refugee in the UK (don’t be put off by the grim subject matter, the first chapter is just about perfect)
- The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, a behind-the-scenes look at El Bulli and the apprentices that make its fussy food possible
- Art and Madness, a sobering memoir of life as a wife who should have a brilliant career of her own but cannot because it’s the sixties
- The London Train, a clever novel of fatherhood
, alas, offers a conventional story of the good son turned Muslim fundamentalist while the rebellious, liberated daughter comes home just in time to tend to her ailing mother and to blunder into her nephew’s life with deadly consequences. The story has many cosy, well observed descriptions of family life just like the ones I liked in the author’s previous novel, 
has a wonderfully intriguing premise,a monstrously large man who cannot leave his bed, let alone his house, or rather the house of his overprotective mother — but unfortunately nothing much happens past the description of the humongous body (hint: it’s not exaclty a pretty sight), the aforementioned overprotective mother (we are not amazed to learn that she has trouble letting go), and a rather bizarre romance between the younger brother and the older brother’s past girlfriend that doesn’t seem to relate in any tangible way to the travails of the largest man in the world. The story is dark and quirky but it doesn’t really go anywhere. What a waste of a great premise.
is a more challenging book than the usual novels and non-fiction exposes reviewed on this blog and I would classify it as a philosophical inquiry into the nature of consciousness. It starts with a rather obscure and not exactly welcoming parable of of an alien investigating our world but it gets better, and I quite enjoyed the discussion the descriptions of the beauty of what the author calls “presentism”, an ugly word to denote the intense emotion of simply enjoying the moment. Perhaps we should apply ourselves to that activity more often.
is written by the long-time companion — but alas not wife of Stieg Larsson, the author of 
to be a schmaltzy, hard to believe romance set in Vietnam during the war and starring an American woman photographer with little experience but motivated by her brother’s combat death to work in Vietnam, her American lover, also a photographer, who makes his own rules about work and everything else, and his Vietnamese assistant, a deserter and spy, and ultimately her lover after the death of the first one, whom she arranges to get evacuated by helicopter from the American embassy at the end of the war. So she somehow manages to be present at all the iconic moments of the war while befriending a caricatural sophisticated French emigree, the pho-making grandmother down the street, and assorted urchins, and spending some idyllic time in the countryside with her lovers. All that sandwiched between often puffed-up descriptions of the beauty of the country and the horrors of war and some pretty unlikely Manichean discourses by the main actors. The rest is pretty good.
to finally understand why but I was left unsatisfied — although, fortunately, not bored by it! Why? I’m not sure but I suspect it’s because I could not quite agree with the author’s definition of boredom. He sees it on a continuum with disgust, and I don’t agree. I see boredom as much less emotional than disgust, more of an intellectual emptiness. I also fail to see boredom as loneliness (one can be bored in the company of others, it seems, even others one considers to be interesting human beings), nor do I consider boredom to be a useful emotion that signals we should remove ourselves from a bad social situation (methinks the realization comes way before boredom sets in!). And I disagree with many of the (beautiful) works of art the author chooses to display as examples of boredom, seeing instead sadness, indifference, or depression. (He does have a priceless example of a bored little boy, though, on page 9.)
. As a gardener, they are some I loathe (Oxalis, anyone?) but I have to marvel at their tenacity. Plus, some are quite pretty. Unfortunately this book put me in a mood of turning pages just a little too fast. The main problem was that I just did not know what the author was talking about, as the (British) author used mostly British examples and who knows the Latin names of weeds? Yes, there are some illustrations here and there but none is labelled and many of the examples in the text have no matching illustrations.
is a rather messily organized book, with frequent repeats, and about a depressing topic: how to take care of aging relatives. Moreover, it’s articulated around the author’s personal experience, which is often a recipe for disaster. And yet, it works. The author’s travails as she struggles to find appropriate care for her mom, a once fiercely independent woman laid low by age and infirmity, are touching even as (perhaps because) she explains how she went wrong and would choose other strategies today. Her resentment of the division of labor with her brother makes perfect sense even if we want to tell her to take that vacation, right away, and don’t even call in for the week. And her mom’s sarcastic sense of humor shines through despite her increasing despair and frustrations.
