Red Cedar

One of the reasons I started this blog (almost 4 years ago now), was because of a comment my friend Anarchocyclist made when we were in the same activist collective – that he would like to see lists of what it was I was reading because he was interested in pilfering off it for his own collection. I get this, because I’m always interested in what my friends are reading too – and so I started my blog off in 2004 with semi-regular book reviews. Sometimes I still post reviews here, though I’m not so on top of that these days – I figured I’d catch up at year end. Below is of course not a complete catalogue, but those things that really tickled me in 2007.

This year my reading habits were characterized by forays into a few writers who I finally got around to and fell completely in love with completely plus a few other finds:

Haruki Murakami

• Dance, Dance, Dance (1993)
• The Elephant Vanishes (Short Stories) (1994)
• The Wind-up Bird Chronicles (1997)
• Hardboiled Wonderland at the End of the World (1999)
• Kafka by the Shore (2006)

People kept telling me that I had to read Murakami – and so I finally picked up a copy of Kafka by the Shore while nosing through bookstores with Anna in Ottawa last winter. And woah, he’s a weirdo in true Vonnegut style which set me off on a Japanese fiction reading kick that got me researching the surrealist period in Japanese literature. The only conclusion that I really came to through that is that most fiction in that genre is really not my cup of tea. Murakami keeps things on the level enough so that his surreal creations are still accessible to my western mind.

Fortunately I’ve only read about half of the Murakami novels out there so I’ve got plenty more to go through in 2008 – and he’s still churning them out – in 2007 he released both a book of short stories and a new novel which I will possess once they are no longer in hard cover.

Peter Carey

• Oscar and Lucinda (1988)
• The Tax Inspector (1994)
• True History of the Kelly Gang (2001)
• Theft (2007)

During the same book finding expedition in Ottawa, Anna mentioned to me for the umpteenth time that I should read Peter Carey – she loved Oscar and Lucinda so much that it was the only book she had ever finished reading then started again from the beginning. During an entirely different trip to Ottawa, I found myself in need of something to read and managed to find a copy of the True History of the Kelly Gang which has won it’s place as one of the ten best books I have ever read. Really, it’s a beautifully-written period piece in which the character is so firmly stamped as to draw you right into his life. Two things about Carey stand out to me in all the work of his I have read so far: his incredible ability to get voice right in his characters (no matter whether they are 19th century Australian outlaws or the developmentally delayed brother of a famous artist in the year 2000), and his inspiring use of language in metaphor. The way he uses words is pleasure in itself, regardless of story – which I’ve never quite felt about any writer before.

Like Murakami, I have not even made it to half the books that Carey has produced – and so will be further pursuing his work to fill my mind and shelves with.

Orhan Pahmuk

• The Black Book (1990)
• Snow (2005)

One of my co-workers raved about Snow and she was right – it is one of the most beautiful tragedies I have read. I’m starting to sense a pattern here as this book was another picked up on a trip through the Ottawa airport for a read on the way home. I later read the Black Book which was his first novel and recently given a better translation for sale on the English-speaking market. Drawing deep and intricate stories, Pahmuk has such a grasp on the Turkish world of which he writes that I found myself completely drawn in to the center of his labyrinth stories. A slow read for me as the writing is dense and rich with symbol (not to mention religious and cultural history I know nothing about). Pahmuk won the Nobel prize in literature for 2006. I am currently reading Istanbul which Brian brought me last night, and it is so far a beautiful and highly-readable memoir of Pahmuk’s life intertwined with the city he has lived in for his whole life.

Terry Eagleton

• The Illusions of Postmodernism (1996)
• After Theory (2004)
• The Meaning of Life (2007)

I had a period of spiritual and political introspection this year that had me reading a lot of Kierkegaard and Wisenthal among others – but no writer spoke to me as much as Eagleton through this whole process on both fronts. Re-reading The Illusions of Postmodernism is what started it, but picking up After Theory really got me going on Eagleton again because he somehow manages to discuss the political, philisophical and even spiritual crisis on the left without being a pompous ass about it. The Meaning of Life is less about the failure of leftism, but takes on the question from a rounded philosophical perspective that is both entertaining and enlightening. I suppose what I really like about Eagleton at the end of the day is that he writes about dense topics in a way that is enjoyable and not suffused with inaccessible, academic language. How to Read a Poem and Holy Terror are both awaiting my attention on the reading pile – so those will for sure go in 2008.

A few other things I enjoyed:

• Long Way Down – Nick Hornby (2007)
• Until I Find You – John Irving (2007)
• Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close – Jonathan Safran Foer (2006)

Each of these novels is worth a read, especially if you like offbeat and amusing literature. I really loved Until I Find You (which, incidentally, was also picked up while traveling for work) and would recommend it highly.

Finally, this was my first year subscribing to McSweeney’s Quarterly which is a literary journal I have soundly fallen for. Each journal takes on a different form of book, both beautiful and strange, and they are packed full of edgy short stories, essays, novellas and poetry. My subscription just ran out so I will be renewing shortly – it’s a little expensive, but each journal delivered to my home brings me a new rush of excitement at what it will look like and contain. Highly worth it, if only for the quarterly thrill 🙂