Another month of reading a wild variety of books. While I tend to read books related to certain themes, I don't think you can accuse me of reading only one kind of topic.
Despite a busy work month, I managed to read six books. Here is the rating scale I use, followed by my reviews of each book listed in my order of preference.
***** An extraordinary book: one of my Top 15 all-time favorites
**** An outstanding book: highly recommended
*** A good book: worth the read
** An OK read, but you'd be better off finding something else
* Not worth the read; avoid at all costs
Dearly, by Margaret Atwood (**** 1/2)
Poetry isn't my favorite genre and I don't read it much, but this very-recent collection of poetry by Margaret Atwood is exceptional. What makes a great poem? I'm not an expert, so I don't really know. Here's my definition anyway: a poem is a short burst of language organized with precision and linguistic style that helps provide the reader with an insight or understanding they didn't realize they had before. If you accept my definition, then this volume of poetry fits the definition almost perfectly.
Dearly consists of approximately 70 poems covering topics including love, aging, loss, nature, our fragile environment, and climate change...even a poem on zombies. The poems on the environment and humanity's role in destroying our planet are my favorite in the collection. It's hard to imagine, unless you have read them, but these environmental poems are both beautiful and thought-provoking. Atwood's Plasticene Suite, a nine-poem lament on the plastic waste that is strangling the Earth, is as powerful an environmental statement as I've ever read. I couldn't have previously imagined such beautiful poetry on plastic waste. But it just proves that when poetry does its job well, it can transform our beings--and these environmental poems are the perfect exemplar of transformative verse. Almost all 70 poems in Dearly bear witness of poetry's potential to speak to our souls.
I recommend this volume highly--it's profound, yet accessible to almost all readers. It's the best collection of poetry I've read in recent years. Atwood has published over 60 outstanding works of poetry, novels, short fiction, non-fiction, children's books and graphic novels. She is in my opinion, one of the two or three most important writers of the past half-century. How she hasn't won a Nobel Prize for her writing (while songwriter Bob Dylan has 😖) is a complete mystery to me. After reading Dearly, I am inspired to find more of Atwood's poetry beyond this first volume I've been exposed to.
Jakarta: History of a Misunderstood City, by Herald van der Linde (*** 1/2)
I've now lived in Jakarta for over 1 1/2 years and I find this metropolitan area of over 32 million souls to be a complex, chaotic, and confusing place at times. This book is a wonderful history that does a fine job of clarifying how Jakarta started and how it ended up where it is now.
Van der Linde was born in Holland, but moved to Jakarta in his 20s and married an Indonesian and has lived in Jakarta almost all his adult life. When he first arrived in Jakarta he did research and discovered that a branch of the van der Linde family had exited Holland and lived in Jakarta since the early 1600s, so the book interweaves the history he discovered of his ancestors with that of the city. Each chapter focuses on a 50-year period in Jakarta's history and one or two crucial events that defined the era. I found it to be an informative book and I learned a great deal which has helped me to make better sense of this mosaic of a city. I am now motivated to return to Kota Tua (the oldest section of Jakarta) to explore some of the historical sites which still stand.
If you live in or have visited Jakarta, you'll find this highly-readable book a wonderful supplement to your Jakarta experience.
Galatea, by Madeline Miller (*** 1/2)
Madeline Miller is noted for re-writing traditional Greek myths from the female characters' perspective. I have her novel, Circe, waiting to be read in the queue on my bookshelf, but haven't picked it up yet because it is so long. So, I pulled Miller's short story, Galatea, out of my queue instead.
Galatea is a retelling of Ovid's version of the Pygmalion myth in Metamorphoses. Miller has taken on this project, of recasting this tale from the perspective of the woman character who isn't even named in Ovid's tale but is called "the woman." Miller gives this character her own name: Galatea.
Very briefly, Galatea is about a sculptor who has created an extraordinarily beautiful sculpture of a woman that the gods bring to life, to fulfill the sculptor's wishes for company. Ovid's version is rather misogynistic, so Miller turns the whole story on its head and creates a heroic character who resists the oppression of the sculptor (who is sort of an early-day, terrible incel) in her brave struggle for independence.
It's a powerful retelling that punctures oppressive, traditional male conceptions of women and just might motivate me to open up the lengthy work by Miller that languishes on my bookshelf.
The Zen Reader. Selections of Zen thought and philosophy curated by
Thomas Cleary (***)
For much of my adult life, I've had an interest in Zen Buddhism, though I would certainly not call myself a practitioner or even someone knowledgable. Yet sometimes I read collections of Zen work because I find it contains much wisdom on how to live.
The Zen Reader is a collection of about 100 quotations and passages from the great Eastern masters of Zen. I wouldn't recommend this book as your introduction to Zen as some of the longer (2-3 page) passages are complex and mind-boggling, designed for those keenly familiar with Zen paradox. A least a third of the selections, I just had to continue past them after reading them, because my feeble mind simply couldn't sort them out--this book definitely dives more deeply into Zen than the desk Zen Calendar from Barnes & Noble which is a bit more my speed. The shorter quotations, however, are definitely more accessible and could be appreciated by anyone.
Actually, the biggest problem here isn't the book, but I how I was reading it. Instead of charging through the book and engaging in the un-Zenlike strategy of reading it in two or three sittings like I did, I would recommend just picking out one passage per day at random and then slowly and patiently working on absorbing it. That's the best way to appreciate this comprehensive collection.
Hitman Anders and the Meaning of it All, by Jonas Jonasson (** 1/2)
This is the 4th book I've read by the Swedish author, Jonas Jonasson. I love the chaos and humor and deeper meaning in much of his work. But, this book is the least favorite I've read of the four. The entire plot seems a bit forced and the main characters aren't as well-developed or sympathetic as in his other books I've read. Though I enjoyed the sarcastic theological musings of the characters through all the explosions and murders (this book does involve a hitman, you should realize), get one of Jonasson's other works, if you want a humorous pick-me-up. I've rated the other Jonasson books I've read below.
-The 100-Year-Old Man who Climbed out the Window and Disappeared (****)
-The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden (****)
-Sweet, Sweet Revenge Ltd. (*** 1/2)
N.P. by Banana Yoshimoto (** 1/2)
The incredibly small group of you who read my reviews on a regular basis (this group could fit into a very small car) know that I try to read a work of Japanese literature each month. I've read two other works by Yoshimoto in the past I really enjoyed, but I had difficulty with this one.
I am still not exactly sure how Yoshimoto created a novel where incest, suicide, alienation, and lost love are the main themes, yet, at the same time, so many of the passages are riddled with trite and trivial-sounding sentiments. Conversely, four or five of the chapters are perfectly phrased and profound. It's a very uneven book, like a river overflowing its banks, the water rushing through all sorts of unusual channels unaccustomed to holding water.
N.P. ends with a shocking poisoning of one of the main characters by another, yet the horrific ending that the trajectory of the book seems to be pointing toward, doesn't materialize, and the four main characters we observe somehow end up surviving in a fairly optimistic mode, which is great, but not justified by the plot of N.P. The terrible inevitability which has been building with enormous intensity in N.P., vanishes abruptly, almost without explanation.
If you wish to experience Yoshimoto's astute observations of contemporary Japanese life, I would recommend starting with Lizard, her excellent short story collection.
As I always say, even if none of these books seems like a fit with your reading style, just find something interesting to read. Your brain will benefit greatly from receiving such stimulating exercise.
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