Nocturnes

Ishiguro's first collection of short stories all with the theme of "music at nightfall".  I loved this.  Familiar as I am now with how Ishiguro writes, this was a special gift.  I was actually giggling (nervously) at one point when one of the characters in his stylized anxiety inducing stories went over the edge and fell in to what could only be "Basil Fawltyland".
What is usually gently built upon during the length of a full sized novel is delivered in a brief one-two punch in his short stories.  I really hope that he will write more in the future because these were perfect.

Great Short Works of Leo Tolstoy

This book was a temperamental springboard for me last year when I was hesitant to engage in anything too emotionally evocative.  It certainly was a kick in the pants, after being numb with grief all winter.   Never have I encountered prose that feels so sincere.  What I mean by that is that often when I am reading modern fiction, I have always wondered if it was genuine.  If the characters would really behave in such a manner?  There has often been a sense of the fantastical about some books which has left me feeling doubtful.  Not so with each of these short novellas.  So I conclude from what I have read of Tolstoy so far that he was a passionate man.  A man, I think, who felt everything deeply, and this is clearly shown in each story.  They are not pretty little works... The people in each of these stories represent a facet of Russian culture that I have never known about, but feel that I would have an easier time understanding now.  It is almost a portfolio of people from many walks of life each distinct and special in their own (terrible) way.  I say terrible, because these aren't 'feel good' tales. 

The hazard with his short fiction is that it comes off like a sucker punch when his longer (much much longer!) works gradually build up to the peak before leaving you awash in such feelings that take your breath away.  There is no buffer before the intensity hits you.  It almost has an addictive quality to it, in that you are keen to come back again for more (well... maybe not right away but eventually yes... you come back for more.).  Which is what makes it feel real and true to what humankind actually is and not what some modern day authors perhaps wishes it to be.  It is also the realism that makes these works so unforgettable (not so much in the words but in the emotions associated with them).

I feel a little closer to knowing the man, Tolstoy.

There is a very charming doodle of him on the cover, which makes him look like a very grumpy emu...

...don't you agree?

Blackout/AllClear

Imagine if you were a historian that could travel back in time to observe particular time periods.  Imagine getting stuck there for some unknown reason...

It's not a new idea, and after reading and watching Doctor Who, there are many examples of time travelling gone wrong, and of the sometimes terrifying consequences.

I read the first half of this dynamic duo a few years back as part of a selection of women authors who have won Nebula Awards.  I loved it until I got  to the end, when I thought,"What's going on here, isn't she cutting it a bit close?"  The book begins with a lot of almost harried activity...there is just so much going on, and underlying is this tension and an uneasy sense that things are tragically going to go to pot, the suspense is just building up with no real release.  Anyone who's read my blog knows just how annoyed I get when I make these discoveries (I hate to read a book and then have to wait for the sequel), but I take all the blame because I didn't do the research.  I was left hanging after finishing Blackout!  I have done the research now.  As a matter of fact I have bought several of Connie Willis' books in preparation for reading this pair, and it works to my advantage because in another of her books Firewatch  (a collection of short stories) is one about this particular universe, so it was with a smug feeling that I began the books, first with the short story Firewatch and then on to Blackout and finishing up with All Clear.  

Naturally I chose November to read this as during this month I usually read someting that has some relation to the World Wars, and these two did not disappoint.  I got an unusual education about an era in our history that is already so well documented.  It was a true homage to the English people, those folks who lived through the Blitz and afterward.  If you want to step in to history, this is a good way to do it.  I loved the books from beginning to end, and since there is over 1100 pages, there's a lot to love. 
I look forward to reading more of Connie Willis' books as these two were so well researched and written, I can understand why she has won so many awards for her genre. 

Friend of my Youth

                         
Keeping in mind the journey I have just completed this past year, by bingeing on Ray Bradbury, you might be able to understand how mystifying I have found Alice Munro to be.  I have never experienced her before, and have only just learnt through casual conversation, that we (meaning DH and myself) had actually visited her book store that time we went down to Victoria to drop DS#3 off at university. 
At the time I admit I was a little preoccupied with “mum stuff“, and the fact that I was looking for two other book related treats (the restaurant ReBar, and Emily Carr’s house).  So I wasn’t really paying attention when we went to Munro’s Books and didn’t realise the significance (not that I‘m saying that visiting a book store is insignificant…we did put two and two together after all and figure it out for ourselves when the only mention in the news was that she actually owned a bookstore in Victoria).

Since Alice Munro's winning of the Nobel, I thought it would be a good idea to finally read something of hers…especially since I have four of her books that I had picked up in various second hand stores. 
I would have to agree with her review blurbs.  She really is very good.  I just don’t understand her yet. 
Friend of my Youth was absorbing and uncomfortable.  Absorbing because this is my very first encounter with Alice Munro and it was engrossing, trying to understand her (haven't figured that out yet!), and uncomfortable because of the subject content of her stories.  I am captivated!  I want to know what makes Munro tick, which means I must read more of her work.  It was so easy and wonderful to read Bradbury because I understood and loved him, so each story was like an affirmation of what I knew.  Not so with Alice, she is a mystery to me, which I look forward to learning about.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

                              
I have, for most of this month,  been taking a reading holiday.  This means that I have, at a whim, been reading what I want and it has not been too challenging, or inappropriate to the holiday just  barely finished.  I looked for inexpensive kindle books to read (mostly Pride and Prejudice variations which I will probably write about at some point after I have had the chance to re-read them again...which will most likely also be at a whim and when I need to take a break), and some Christmas themed stories (with one or two of them also a P&P variation).  Naturally I revisited Dicken's A Christmas Carol.
So now that Christmas is over (pretty much), I pulled something out of one of my many boxes of books to read last night and this book, I thought, would be good for an appetizer.  Since I have only read The Great Gatsby, I have no great expectations as to how this story would go not knowing what kind of story was typical for Fitzgerald, so it was a surpise.  The movie brought my attention to the story (though I have never and probably shall not ever see the movie...I just can't bear Brad Pitt and it takes a lot for me to overcome that particular prejudice to see a movie he stars in), and I came across this little gem on a sale table for about a dollar or two (who could resist that?).
It is such a charming little book!  It is almost what you would call a novella.  The illustrations are rich and cheerful, adding that special something to enhance the story, the colours teal and purple unifying the illustrations throughout the book.  I don't believe that I am giving anything away (thanks to movie trailers), but all I will say was that I was curious how this story might have come about...how he would have been born old in the first place (and a fully grown old man at that!) and how his life would have ended (no doubt the movie would have elaborated on that, but I can say no more without giving away too much information).   This edition is worth a look, and I will be keeping an eye out for other pretty editions of the author's work. 

A Memory of Murder

Just when you think you have him figured out, he throws you through another loop and shares some golden oldies that surprise and shock by how macabre the stories are.  He has caught me by surprise before, so I shouldn’t have been too shocked by it.  Perhaps it is because it has been  distilled in to one great collection that makes it so potent.  Perfection!

The Cat's Pajamas

The Cat’s Pajamas is dedicated to Ray’s wife Maggie who passed away a few weeks before publishing.  The short story ‘The House’ must have been written for her once he could start writing again, the sentences within say so much about how he was feeling.
The rest are quite an eclectic collection, all with an almost crazy idea and an important message to them.  It is all a part of the world of Ray Bradbury, and a significant collection which I think I will re-visit often.

A Sentimental Journey

I could probably spend years of my life thinking and writing about the stories of Ray Bradbury, it would be the masters program of my dreams, studying, understanding, and re-imagining, the genius of the man.  From one standpoint, it is so simple to see what he planned for each book, why he assembled and reassembled such stories in this collection and that collection, and the greater joy of enjoying yet again a favourite story, in a new setting, adding nuances that were not there before, just because he wanted you to feel some other way before you re-read something of his.
There is so much to think about after each story, there are messages here, important ones, that I think he hoped we would understand and that would somehow change the way we thought about life.
With age, he just kept on improving, getting richer, more mature.  This collection proved this repeatedly, as he and his characters took a sentimental journey, having written this just ten years before his death.   This was the first time (after reading this book in 2002), that I started to dread the inevitable, that at any time he would no longer be with us, so I began treasuring everything written after that, knowing that it might be his last book, always hoping for just one more story.

Bobcat and Other Stories

These short stories are well written and, I only guess here, have a unifying theme of desire.  Not, of course, of the same type of desire.  I have to admit I was pretty bummed about the topics.  There wasn't anything here that uplifted me emotionally (it was mostly in the other direction...down, even with the story Slatland), and I was very thoughtful after reading each story.  This isn't something I am comfortable with, but I welcome it because each new experience is a challenge and I felt that I could probably spend a lot of time pulling apart each story and finding new nuances I hadn't experienced the previous reading, which means that at a later date I will come back and re-visit this book, and of course, I will keep an eye out for Rebecca Lee's future works.

A Medicine For Melancholy

A medicine for melancholy, an excellent theme for a book and a magical short story as well.  This collection is stunning because of the emotions it evokes.  One moment you are transformed by awe, romance, or beauty and the next moment/story you are jolted out of complacency by a story that impacts you to your very soul.  Amongst the beauty and the romance is cruelty, ignorance, and evil,  it’s a very potent cocktail, that needs to be drunk off fast, and then slowly digested, savouring all of the effects each flavour evokes (corny I know, but you can excuse me can’t you?  I have been reading Ray Bradbury after all!). 

I Sing the Body Electric

In true Bradbury style an homage is paid to Papa Hemingway in The Kilimanjaro Device.  A birthing procedure gone wrong, delivering up a baby from another dimension in Tomorrows Child?  A bizarre fight for a man in The Women. An artistic chicken in the Inspired Chicken Hotel, and what every assassin and attention seeker needs in Downwind From Gettysburg.
Yes, We’ll Gather at the River is a testament to change, and a lyrical Irish tale written to amaze and astonish (what on earth did I just read?) in The Cold Wind and the Warm.  Self-aware telephones in Night Call, Collect (Ray had an uncanny sense of how things would be in the future).
I Sing the Body Electric, a story so impassioned and bittersweet.  Any Friend of Nicholas Nickleby’s is a Friend of Mine is a very special homage to the great Charles Dickens and to the love of writing.  Heavy Set is just downright creepy (how did he do it?  I imagine him chuckling with impish glee whenever he wrote such stuff).  And in Henry the Ninth an unwillingness to let go of what is most important.
It’s a collection of stories about love, the many ways we love, the many things we love and in true Bradbury fashion, some alternatives to love.  It’s beautiful, it’s magic, it’s pure Ray Bradbury at his most loving.

A Sound of Thunder & Other Stories

This is a wonderful selection of Bradbury’s greatest short stories.  If you ever wanted to just buy the one book (though I personally would not be able to stop at just one book!) this would be a good contender because it has a broad spectrum of his many years of storytelling, covering his many periods or phases of literature.
While I began with The Martian Chronicles, and progressed from there to the rest of his space themed collections…and everything else he has ever written, this book would be a really good introduction for the novice Bradbury reader.  

The Toynbee Convector

It is really interesting to see what Ray Bradbury's focus was about later on in his very long life.  It all makes sense of course, an old love story, a long and enduring marriage, haunting memories from past wars, time-travellers, real or invented.  The theme for this book was time that has passed,  it is an homage to things long gone.   I  think the older Ray got the cheekier he became too (the story Junior being an excellent example of that! Only Ray would write a story about an eighty-two year old man's erection), and of course the man who discovered that his childhood fear of the bogeyman was not so unfounded after all, when he decided to go back and confront that fear.  Cheeky!

  

The Machineries of Joy

I am presented with points of view that I have never considered before:- Irish Catholic Priests in America faced with the unknowns of the birth of space travel.  A gaseous entity encountering humans for the first time on Mars.  A Hollywood monster-maker whose tyrannosarus rex becomes too lifelike.  The last family in America going on vacation.  The fears of a drummer boy about to go into battle.  Invasion through fungi.  The calamity of losing radio and television on a small town.  Indians seeing white men for the first time ever.   A sea captain still in mourning for his lost love.  The Day of Death in Mexico.   A pshychiatrist presented with an illustrated woman.  A son strangled by his mother.  An understanding of the worth of a true miracle.  The insanity of a murderous ventriloquist.  The beggar as a professional.  The obsession with death of an old spinster who has never really lived.  The hazards of success.  The importance placed in Mexico of a place to stay when you are dead.   An old man remembering a better way of life.   Irish competitiveness. I can safely say that I will never look at mushrooms the same way again...

Long After Midnight

 Like I've said recently I haven't read a lot of Bradbury for a while for several different reasons and even when I have they have been pretty specific arrangements (all of a similar theme).   This one was a hodgepodge of whammy!  It is not an easy thing to blog about because this is a collection of short stories... how do you present that?  But I am compelled to put something down because I am still feeling it, so it must need to be said.  Coarsely put, it was a mindfrack.  This collection was so very easy to read, I transitioned from story to story with remarkable ease, not sinking too deeply into any one story, and not being able to put it down until I had finished the lot.  After I was done it was like a cumulative wallop to the body, some sentimentalism, affection, awe, humor, a stab of horror and then something sweet.  It was a lot to process all at once, and really overwhelming.  Read bit by bit or all at once, reading Bradbury is a poignant experience but it will be a while before I do it again.