Sunday, January 23, 2011

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

At last I got around to reading what many people say is their favourite and one of the greatest novels ever written. I hadn’t read any Tolstoy before and was surprised at how lucid and simple the language is, much like Churchill’s speeches, clear and without needless embellishment but with a fineness of meaning that often takes your breath away. I was prepared for the sad tale of Anna, but amazed at how realistic the collapse of her mental state seemed. I could really see the decline and fall of this woman. And I was delighted with Levin, who is a bit of a self portrait of Tolstoy’s, a man who struggles with his role as a landowner, with his faith and with the entire meaning of existence. I saw the film The Last Station recently and between that, and seeing the wonderful performance of Uncle Vanya that Sydney Theatre Company put on late last year, I really feel as if I am gaining some sort of handle on the Russian situation, then of course, not now.
So back to the book. Brilliant, a masterpiece, all the clichés. It took me a month to read it, dipping in and out, because it’s not a story you race through. I was glad to have the time and a peaceful environment in which to explore it and to think about the concepts and enjoy the language, and glad to be old enough to understand and have experienced the aspects of human nature that Tolstoy explores.
5 stars

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Stuff White People Like by Christian Lander

One of the things Lander says that white people like is irony. And this book is all irony. It’s a fairly flippant piece that lists a hundred or so things that ‘white people like’ but by white people, he means middle class people and/or those striving to impress. The list makes you alternately cringe and laugh out loud: coffee, farmers’ markets, gifted children, Prius cars, renovations, NGOs, having gay/black/other ethnicity friends and so forth. There’s something there for all of us. But while Lander clearly wants to have a dig at political correctness and people trying hard to impress, this is a lightweight book cobbled together quickly from his widely read blog at the behest of a publisher in a big hurry, so you can expect no more than a columnist style wit and depth. Entertaining enough but not worth buying. 2 stars

Sunday, January 16, 2011

Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson

I’m quite ambivalent about this book. It’s a murder mystery/detective thing that switches between the points of view of several characters and between two periods of time. I was confused about which detective was which from beginning right through to the end. And I also found the main characters fairly unsympathetic at the outset, not really establishing themselves as people I cared about until well into the second half of the book. Some of the characters were really quite irrelevant. So, while I wanted to find the answer to the mystery and finished the book for that reason, I really found it unnecessarily complicated and a bit of a chore. 2 stars