Fall Reading

Book club:

• Richard Ford – Canada
• W. G. Sebald – The Emigrants

My own:

• DeLillo – Underworld
• J.K. Rowling writing as Robert Galbraith –  The Silkworm

 

Round House

I’ve been remiss and not posted in a long time. So here are a few updates.

The reading group

Currently reading –  The Round House by Louise Erdrich

Recent reads

• The Hare with the Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal
• Beyond the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo
• The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
• State of Wonder by Ann Patchett

 Book blogs and web sites recently discovered

• Goodreads
• You can follow my reviews and recommendations at my Goodreads page
• The Passive Voice

Writing

• The new Zoe Szabo mystery should be done by summer
• An e-book of short stories about women artists. I’ll put up a link when it is available.

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Post-Colonialism, Post-Soviet Style

Post this under “recently read.”  The book club read Gary Shteyngart’s Absurdistan–set in post-Soviet Azerbaijan–a few months ago, and then, after finding the book incredibly sexist, decided to read a female take on the changes in Eastern Europe since the fall of communism. For that Tea Obrecht’s The Tiger’s Wife–set in the former Yugoslavia–by fit the bill perfectly.

A propos of Absurdistan is the featured book on the Leonard Lopate show book club on WNYC-FM. Shteyngart will be on to discuss his novel on January 10, 2012.

On the Lopate Book Club page, you can find interviews with Salman Rushdie on Midnight’s Children (also one of our book club post-colonial-themed reads).

On Absurdistan, I found it interesting that Halliburton and the oil industry have replaced the Soviets as a colonizing force. One of our members felt the main character had some of the characteristics in the “holy fool” tradition in Russian literature. Others disliked the book–either because the satire didn’t ring true, they were offended by the profoundly negative and sexualized depiction of women. That all the female characters were prostitutes or near-prostitutes bothered me as well. It seemed to me to be a cheap path for an author to take, although I did find the humor and the critique of post-Soviet globalization sharp and incisive.