NEW BLOG

my dear followers

as you may have noticed i have been rather inattentive with this blog lately. this is part due to some private stuff and also because i unwillingly deleted all pictures on the blog (haha i know i'm stupid), since that really annoyed me, i couldn't bring myself to go on and i also don't want to do the arduous work of going to put all pictures back in. but don't worry i didn't stop reading. i just decided i just start a new blog...

you can find it here...

also my taste in books seems to have changed over the past few months, it's a little less ya, i hope you don't mind.

thank you all and maybe see you on my new blog

andone

before i go to sleep by (2010)

christina wakes up every day with no memories. she has amnesia because of an accident many years ago. she learns that she secretly meets a doctor who gave her the advise to write a diary, but when she reads it, a lot of questions occur. do the people around her really tell her the truth?

a fantastic thriller about the loss of the own personality. what are we without our memories?

this is a really cool debut novel.

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ubik by philip k. dick (1969)

this is my first novel by dick, after i read several short stories.

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homo faber by max frisch (1977)

walter faber doesn't believe in faith, he's an engineer, he believes in mathematics. after an unplanned adventure in south-america and the break-up with his girlfriend afterwards back in new york, he travels to europe on board of a ship. there he meets his daughter (who he didn't know existed at the time being) and they begin a relationship.

this book is a report, written by faber himself, the style is quite unique.

max frisch is one of the most famous swiss writers. i already read his play andorra and i'm very curious about the novels stiller and my name be gantenbein.

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the nose by nikolaj gogol (1830)

one day major kowaljow's nose is missing, and he goes searching for it. apparently it's got a passport and is trying to escape but fortunately the policeman can catch it in time and brings it to its owner.

a weird short story about the loss of a nose and what this means for a man in a good position...

the nose is one of nikolaj gogol's favourite themes, as i learned in the appendix of this small booklet.

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agnes by peter stamm (1998)

the narrator meets agnes, a young woman, in the library and they fall in love and begin a relationship.he's a writer andshe asks him to write a story about their life, but soon the story is causing problems in their relationship.

peter stamm is a swiss author and agnes is his debut-novel.

a nice small book, good writing and an interesting story.

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the dying animal by philip roth (2001)

i wanted to read philip roth because of an interview that i read in a magazine which really impressed me. i heard about the books of course but never was drawn to read one, but i thought ok now i give it a try and my mother gave me this one, which she had at home.

david kepesh is a professor with a love for young women, mostly students of him. one day he gets to know consuela, also a student, and after the semester, they begin an affair. but this affair is not like the ones he had, he becomes obsessed with consuela and always fears to loose her to a younger man.

a great character-study. roth lets us see inside the mind of david kepesh, lets ud see and understand his thoughts and reasons, even if they are a little strange sometimes, you get to understand this man.

the title of the book is from w.b. yeats poem sailing to byzantium:

"consume my heart away; sick with desire
and fastened to a dying animal"

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on the hillside by markus werner (2004)

thomas clarin goes to his weekend-apartment in agra, to write an article about divorce-law. on the first evening he eats dinner in the hotel bellevue, where he takes place at the table of an older single man. he begins a conversation and soon is fascinated by this man, loos. what is it about this man?

this book is mainly a dialogue between the two men, but what a dialogue, full of interesting thoughts, visions and ideas. it's really stimulating to read. and the ending of the book is very cool, even though i have to admit that i knew how it would end, because someone once told me, and that was exactly the reason why i wanted to read the book in the first place.

markus werner is a swiss author by the way. i don't think the book was translated in english, i didn't find it anyway. will definitively check out his other works.

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against the grain by karl-joris huysman (1884)

jean des essaintes is the last of a dynasty. after an extreme and unconventional life he's now a lonely, eccentric and nerves-sick man, who tries to replace reality with an artificial reality, a dream of reality, which thus becomes reality for him.

really this is novel without a plot, it was the intention of huysman to write about his thoughts, about history and art and poetry and science and not to tell a story. that's sometimes very interesting and other times annoying.

the reason that i wanted to read this book in the first place was because it's said to be the one that inspired dorian gray in oscar wilde's masterpiece the picture of dorian gray, which is one of my favourite books.

nowadays it's not such a shocker anymore but i guess it was at the time.

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hamlet by william shakespeare (1603)

hamlet's father, the king of denmark is insidiously murdered by his brother, who then becomes king and marries hamlet's mother. the old king's ghost seeks hamlet, who swears to take revenge. as he is acting very strange, everyone thinks he's gone mad over his father's dead. but he wants to know first if the ghost has only been a temptation of the devil who whants him to go bad. he therefore creates a play which reflects the deed and exposes the guilty king.

to be honest i was not that impressed by this piece, not like i was with a midsummernight's dream, the merchant of venice and macbeth, but yeah it's good of course.

ma favourite line (from ophelia's monologue o what a noble ming is here o'erthrown):

"o, woe is me

t' have seen what i have seen, see what i see!"

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