Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Days, a novel by Salman Rushdie

Does Salman Rushdie likes fantasy and mystery and macabre?   Written in the spirit of the Arabian nights story, one thousand and one nights etc etc… this puts a new spin on things.  I have never read the Arabian nights tale, so I just requested it from the library and you will see my posting soon. J

This book is filled with Jinns and Jinnia from long, long ago who arrive present day through small slivers in time.  I’m only paraphrasing what I’ve read.

The story begins with Dunia (a lightening princess) and Ibn Rushd (a human).  Dunia has about 19 children in the span of the title of the book which amounts to roughly 1,001 nights. 

When Dunia’s birth father is killed, she goes on a revenge binge to kill all involved. 

Geronimo, Jimmy, and Teresa are Dunia’s great, great, great, great, great  (and many more greats) grandchildren with strange powers and she enlists them to fight a war to bring peace and avenge her father’s murder.

I like Rushdie’s writing and he has a highly perceptive mind.  He speaks about parasitic jinn and suicide jinn and I can’t help but think about what is happening in the world today.  Only evil would do such a thing.  I do associate some of his scenery and characterizations to real life - good versus evil, God and the devil, spirits, and the natural and supernatural realm we live in.   What I take away from this story is that love conquers all.  If we love our neighbor as we love ourselves, we will now want to do them any harm them.

1984 by George Orwell

I read this in school, but what do I remember?  Big Brother is watching you. That’s it!

This time, I am reading with a different mindset.  What did I know back then? Not as much as I know now.

Winston and Julia get caught up in each other.  Winston is sure that he remembers things from his past.  He is sure that something is amiss.  Julia is just hanging out rebelling against the Party. 

Winston chooses to remember past details that have been changed.  Others choose to believe what is told to them and go on with their lives. Winston knows that a mind game is being played, unfortunately, his mind won’t let him play along.

Winston works in the Ministry of Truth.  He is one of the people who make changes to news items that get published in the newspaper. Other departments are responsible for other changes like the Records Department who edits photographs.

The children are taught to spy, even on their parents. 

The Ministry titles are the exact opposite of what they really do.  The Ministry of Truth tells lies.   The Ministry of Love tortures people. 

This is a world where food is rationed, and the food that is rationed is meager to begin with.  Victory gin is given out in the cafeteria where people work.  Razor blades are rationed. What kind of person is “Big Brother”?  There is no privacy.  Everyone is watched and has a television set in their home that watches them. Words are made and spliced together so as to shorten conversations and the thought process.  No one can think for themselves.  

Is that what the world was coming to? With all the social media apps, smart phones and the internet, 1984 makes you wonder.

The Slow Regard of Silent Things by Patrick Rothfuss

I definitely picked up this book because it was small enough to fit in my pocket book and it was in brand new condition.   I had never heard of the author before this.

It is mysteriously written, as the character, Auri, is mysterious to the reader.  You don’t know where she comes from but you learn that she lives underground, she follows the underground pipes to go from place to place and she has names for the rooms she visits.

So the author has a disclaimer in the beginning of the book that you probably should read his two previous books to understand this one.  So you know where I’m heading…

I continued to read this one anyway.  In this story we are never told why Auri lives underground.  Each day has a different name such as mending day, finding day, etc.

Auri has seven days to prepare for a visitor. The book ends with Auri still waiting.

The other two books are The Name of the Wind AND The Wise Man’s Fear.

Stay tuned for those postings!

Chaos And Night by Henry De Montherlant

 I must admit that I don’t know what made me select this one from the library – it looked pretty new on the shelf??

Don Celestino is a bitter old man. But is he bitter with himself or with the world as it is?

He stops speaking to two of his friends (or his only two friends) and when they respond in kind, he wonders at the fact they he cannot talk to them about what ails him.

He is living in France, exiled from Spain and all he does is complain about France. He has a daughter that lives with him and he begins to notice a change in her reactions toward him.  She does not engage his rants and articles he hopes to publish and she begins to lie to him of her whereabouts.

Celestino fought in the Spanish Civil War and he is haunted by visions of seeking the enemy with his gun. He thinks at any moment he will be arrested for his participation.  He talks out loud while walking in the street.  He thinks that the handful of people he knows are against him.  He is driving himself mad! 

When his sister dies, her husband tells Celestino that he must come to Madrid to settle her estate.  This only enhances his madness.  The only exciting part of her return are the tickets he bought to see the bullfights.  The story ends with a description of the bull-fighting (tauromachy) practice and Celestino uses that analogy to describe his life, or actually his end-of-life. He then begins to feel for the bull who is already predisposed to die before getting in the ring.

An interesting tale.

The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera

Milan Kundera was born in Czechoslovakia.  When they were invaded by Russia in 1968, he lost his job as a teacher and his writings were removed from libraries.  He wasn’t allowed to publish either.  I guess they did not like what he had say. 

This is a book of short stories.  The first story is about Mirek.  He is attempting to retrieve some letters that he left in the house of an old girlfriend, Zdena.  Since they are not in a relationship anymore, she is not very willing to give him his property.   Those letters contain information that could be used against him so they are quite important to him. Unfortunately, he goes to prison and never gets those letters.

The 2^nd story, a different set of characters – are they swingers? Yes…Swingers with a twist because the wife set up the whole shebang!

Tamina is in the chapter Lost Letters.  Her late husband was named Mirek.  Not the same Mirek as in the first story.  She does not want to forget him.  She also tries to retrieve some letters – making her mind go a little cuckoo...

The last story is titled Borders.  All Jan talks about is sex.  Somehow he equates everything in life being within borders – men/women, life/death. 

The story that I liked the most was Litost.  Litost is explained as “a state of torment caused by sudden insight into one’s own miserable self.”  I like to think of it this way – and this is the example he used in the book -  your girlfriend is a top athlete, but you don’t swim that well, so one day you are both in the water swimming and she beats you back to shore but you get water in your mouth, etc but you don’t want to tell her that, and you have an attitude when you return to shore and when she asks you what is wrong, you berate her using the line that she should not have swam that fast, the water was to rough and she could have been hurt, rather than admit that you don’t swim well, you make up false reasons for resenting her swimming abilities.  By the way, Litost is a Czech word – as per authors note.

The theme of these stories are laughing and forgetting. Some characters are laughing hysterically and others don’t want to forget certain things.  However, laughing and forgetting is mainly about Czechoslovakia.  When it was taken over by Russia, old things were replaced with other things so that the old things could be forgotten!   These characters are going through similar occurrences in their day to day lives.

Kundera’s writing is witty, funny, keen and ironic!   His symbolism of people and their struggles and politics and the like are quite perceptive.