some books i read lately.

  • gyorgy dragoman – regele alb (the white king). wow! that was a ride! thank you!

  • mircea cartarescu – orbitor. corpul (glaring. the body). somehow, not as exciting as the first part. one feels the anguish he has in staring at the white paper, waiting to be filled.

  • jane kallir – egon schiele. complete works. a must. at least for the drawings! but read the essays covering schiele’s life through and you can learn a lot!

  • mircea cartarescu – orbitor. aripa stinga (glaring. the left wing). this was something in the way of a revelation. never read a novel from him before and i can only say it’s charming. both ways: it makes you take part in a surreal world, weaved from dreams, histories and biographies and, at the same time, it is written so darn well!

  • paleologu – eul destesabil (the detestable i). a little book that does not amount to very much. one could write it in a couple of weeks, reading biographies of famous painters and season it with unspectacular personal adventures.

  • lee seldes – das vermächtnis mark rothkos. the book is mostly about the legal stuff surrounding rothkos painting and legacy but there is also enough information about his life, his way with the others, his fears, etc.

  • jhumpa lahiri – once in a lifetime . a perfect read. a little story that draws you into an intimate atmosphere, where all you can do is be quiet and listen. any sudden move might disturb the web…

  • vladimir nabokov – natasha. a strange little story. do not know how much nabokov is in it and how much his son.

  • frederic beigbeder – memoires d’n jeun homme derange. like a brisk metro ride with the parisian underground. late at night.

  • anne tyler – morgan’s passing. the first tyler book i read so far. do not really know how to take it. it is a bit too soft and not complicated enough.

  • banana yoshimoto – harboiled and hard luck. two short stories. strange. japanese? i read too little japanese prose to be able to say anything about it. but it reminded me of murakami, somehow. light and dark. here and there. or, rather, on the other side. must read one more, to get an idea about it.

  • michael ignatieff – scar tissue. i have to do a little working on how to take in this book. it hits/hurts a little bit too much.

  • marina lewicka – a history of tractors in ukranian. a funny but draining story. a light meditation on living between two languages, between two countries. a spiraling plot that ends up, surprise-surprise, well. everybody had learned their lesson and everybody turns to their lives and continue to live happily ever after. i read it on the royal star, the ship that carried us to zanzibar.

  • jonathan franzen – the discomfort zone. on the airplane to kenya. a short, autobiographical book, on being young and a bit nerdy in the states. i’d like to read some more from franzen. he writes good and i’d like to read a plot by him.