holy crap--only 16 more and i hit 100. seriously, give me recommendations! lend me books! i must meet my goal!
david bezmogis' natasha and other stories
these stories all revolve around the berman family, russian immigrants to canada who are trying to adjust to their new lives (short stories that all revolve around a family are some of my favorites to read--very ellen gilchrist!). one is forced to wonder how autobiographical these stories are--the author himself came to canada from latvia as a boy. of course, the stories themselves are so well-written and homey that i quickly got caught up in them and stopped thinking about bezmogis. all of these stories are great, but the title story is particularly compelling, as the main character spends a lazy summer smoking pot and foolin' around with his uncle's new stepdaughter (i kind of don't like that the book jacket calls them cousins, since that makes it seem a lot more incestuous than it really is). the family relationships here are all very vivid and tangled, just like real life, and the only story that falls flat for me is the one about his grandmother's death, which for some reason is interspersed with the main character's trip to california to research a boxer. the final story, about elderly jews trying to get apartments and trying to keep their lives going, hit close to home and is probably my favorite of them all. so, yes, in case you can't tell, this book definitely deserves all the praise being heaped on it, and i highly recommend it.
8 comments:
have you read VURT by Jeff Noon? (it's cyberpunk but veddy veddy English). Also good: THE DIAMOND AGE by Neal Stephenson and THE DIFFERENCE ENGINE by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling
(we have some or all of those and would be glad to lend them)
- georg
Woo! The Difference Engine might be a good cyber/steampunk gateway novel! I love William Gibson's stuff...(His most recent one, Pattern Recognition, is also a good Gibson starter book. And with a main character named Pollard HOW CAN YOU GO WRONG?). He used to go to UVic and read passages from his forthcoming books, because he lives in Vancouver. I got him to sign my books, and for the Difference Engine he dated his autograph 1855 ! (MIke)
well, if both of you are recommending it, i am willing to ignore my usual avoidance of cyberpunk (really, i think it's the term that bothers me) and give the difference engine a whirl. if one of you doesn't mind lending it to me, that is. :)
DIFFERENCE ENGINE is set in Victorian Britain and one of the main characters is Ada Lovelace, daughter of Lord Byron. It's probably the definitive "steampunk" novel and it's as much alternate-history as it is cyberpunk
-georg
well, that actually sounds awesome! please lend it to me!
Add to that that "Pattern Recognition" isn't really cyberpunk or steampunk at all... it's set in the current time. It's both very different from Gibson's other books, and very identifiably Gibson at the same time. I'd actually rate it better than The Difference Engine, but I say read 'em both if you need 16 more! ;) (MIke)
Recommended:
Paul Auster--The New York Trilogy
Paricia Highsmith--The Talented Mr. Ripley
Kelly Link--Stranger Than Fiction
Vladimir Nabokov--Pnin
Jorge Luis Borges--Ficciones
Herman Melville--Pierre, or the Ambiguities
Charles Brokden Brown--Weiland
HP Lovecraft--Anything
register, you are such a well-read kitty! thank you for the recommendations--i've only read the borges on that list, and the kelly link book has been on my amazon wishlist for like a year. i will read them all!
thank you everyone!! you all rock!
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