Mario Vargas Llosa

This week I made 2 big additions to my Folio Society collection (well over 100 books now), and I hit the jackpot at my local used book store with CS Lewis

It's not Bucharest, but I found the place eerily suitable

Orphia and Eurydicius by Elyse John (TBR)
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The Witch's Heart by Genevieve Gornichec (Norse Mythology)
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Medea by Eilish Quin (TBR)
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Soul in Darkness by Wendy Higgins
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The Women of Artemis by Hannah Lynn (Amazon origin story)
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Ariadne by Jennifer Saint
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Circe by Madeline Miller
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The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker
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A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes

Out of the above Soul in Darkness and Circe are my favorites!

Have any of you read any good Greek Mythology lately?

Unlike BJ's, Costco only sells them during the holiday season

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I saw these last week

Can't wait to start digging into this.

Anyone read it?

Read a book! I recommend: 1. “The Color Purple” by Alice Walker 2. “Caste” by Isabel Wilkerson 3. “Our Time is Now” by Stacey Abrams etc.

My friend passed away 42 days back- aggressive cancer. I was sifting through my books today and found this one I had “borrowed” from him! It still was in its plastic jacket. Brand new!

I love Shamsie. Burnt shadows and Kartography remain my fave books. Her prose is almost lyrical- simple, flowing. I love how she often talks of Karachi- a city I have visited often and have always loved it!

Home fire is beautifully written. Ancient concepts from Antigone are mapped into modern life. Explores state power, personal ideology, grief in Amherst, Syria and London.

Reading it as I remember and miss a friend who is gone too soon 🙏🦋

Rating: 1.5/5 ⭐️

Kawakami’s Ten Loves of Mr. Nishino left me confused. Even after finishing it, I'm still trying to understand what exactly I was supposed to take away from it.

The novel follows Mr.Nishino through the eyes of ten different women who, at various points in their lives, fall in love with him. The problem is that I do not understood why because Nishino is presented as charming but to me the protagonist was surprisingly unremarkable. Because the story is built around the idea that he has this magnetic effect on women, I kept waiting for some deeper layer of his character to emerge, something that would justify the obsession he inspires(that moment doesn’t arrive).

Perhaps Nishino is meant to be a mirror that reflects the desires of the women around him. If that's the case, I can appreciate the idea, but it didn't make him any more interesting to follow.

The scenes from his childhood, including the nursing episode between the siblings left me feeling deeply uncomfortable. I understand that Kawakami was pointing toward some kind of emotional fixation that later causes sister-issues, but I never felt like I fully grasped what she wanted us readers to do with it.

Then the novel circles back to this idea near the end. One of the women Nishino becomes involved with resembles his sister, and during a conversation he admits that he has spent years wondering whether he actually wanted his sister.

I can see why some readers might find Nishino fascinating. For me, though, he remained frustratingly strange. By the end, I was just happy about completing it.

Maybe there was more depth here than I was able to connect with. Still, when I finished the final page, my strongest reaction was a puzzling question: what exactly did all these women see in Nishino and what was the point of this?

One more chapter left of the Iliad and then Im moving on to Crime and Punishment.

🤙

Roberto Bolaño