theburningbookshelf-blog

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The Dutch readathon: 29th of July - 4th of August

As of today, the very first Dutch readathon has started, ending next sunday night. And I'm participating, so I've got a week full of reading ahead. It's the first readathon I've ever participated in, so I'm both very excited and kind of uncertain about how things will work out.

To be entirely honest, I haven't read that much at all past year. (Which is the reason for TBB hibernating during that time.) So for me this readathon will be about getting me back to reading. And not just for half an hour here or there. I'm sure a lot of us know how easy it is to let the internet (or maybe television) eat away at your reading time. I know I do. 

So here's the deal:

Goal: Reading at least four hours a day for six days, so in total 24 hours of reading. I'm exempt on sunday as it's my mum's birthday and she's got big plans. But I'll try to fit some reading in anyway.

Plan: Replacing most of the time I'm currently spending on the internet. Roughly: one hour in the morning and three in the afternoon/evening. Hopefully more.

Books: I haven't got a list of books I'm reading for this readathon. I'll mostly be going for those unread books that have been on my shelves for far too long and seeing as I'm a bit of a compulsive book buyer, I'll have enough to choose from.

Writing this down, 24 hours doesn't seem like a lot. For this readathon, some people are reading 24 hours in… 24 hours. But hey, like I said: my goal is to read at least 4 hours each day and to try reading more.

You can keep track of my progress on the (spanking new) TBB twitter account @TBBblog. Next to that, there'll be some short reviews of the books I've read on TBB itself. (After all, I want to be spending time on reading, not writing.) And there might even be a small giveaway for people participating in the readathon, but that's still to be decided. Feel inspired? All Dutchies can participate starting at this page. As for the others: why not shut down that computer and have some reading time right now?

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Review: Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell ★★☆☆☆

Following the PRISM-scandal, interest in Nineteen Eighty-Four spiked. To be more exact: book sales rose with an enormous 7000 percent! For me, the book had been waiting on both my to read list and my bookshelf for quite a while, so I decided to give it a go.

1984 left me with some seriously mixed feelings. At times, the book was a big disappointment. If I'd expected a book reminiscent of Animal Farm, I was wrong entirely. Though the theme of a dystopian society in a totalitarian communistic state is the same, that's where the similarities end. And where I remember Animal Farm to be fairly light-hearted and fun, 1984 is dark and not at all as easily read.

I'm not saying that it's hard to get the central message. It's not the kind of book that has layers upon layers of subtle meaning. Neither is it the kind of book that demands your full attention, lest you might miss the point. Orwell is all too clear in what he wants to tell us about this fictional world: it sucks, big time!

Especially at the start of the book, this annoyed me. Calling the ministry responsible for state propaganda the Ministry of Truth? Or the one torturing unruly 'comrades' the Ministry of Love? Having a daily ‘Two Minutes Hate’ to get everyone in a patriotic frenzy? I get that the ruling Inner Party are a bunch of not-so-nice hypocrites, but I think that that's overdoing it a bit.

The difficulty in reading this book was staying interested. The almost entirely exists out of Winston's thoughts on the world he lives in, and nothing else. There's very little action and as such, only day to day happenings such as going to work and fixing his neighbour's drain. There’s nothing even resembling a plot. And here’s the deal: I understand that if an author has conjured up a whole world, they don't want to omit half of those details when writing it down. Even so, I think that it might’ve been better for the plot if Orwell had done that, because the way it is, I struggled not to just abandon the book.

Part of the problem is that times change. Presumably, a dystopian communistic society would've been a thrill to read about half a century ago, especially as this book was written at a time where most of the west saw communism as a legitimate threat to the world. But nowadays – while the market of dystopian novels is overflowing with YA easy-reads – the fact that a novel's world is a bleak, almost unimaginably horrible place, can't make up for a lack of a story.

Luckily, after a while the story picks up. Our main character, Winston Smith, remembers little of life before the Revolution, but nevertheless harbours an enormous hatred for the Party, it's personification 'Big Brother' and just about everyone and everything he encounters. When he's having some chocolate, he'll tell us that it tastes 'like the smoke of a rubbish fire'. When the chocolate rations set by the Ministry of Plenty decline, it's nevertheless a reason to hate the Party some more.

Next to that, he's overly dramatic and aggressive. He's 'in agony' over a girl he's barely spoken a word to. He imagines violently murdering someone, just because they had unknowingly prevented Winston from speaking to her. Winston tells us that thanks to the Party 'everything gets mingled with hate and fear' and because of that, I find it very hard to say anything definite about him as a character. Is his negativity all due to the Party or is he just an enormous pessimist? Which parts of his behaviour (such as, possibly, his slightly misogynistic tendencies) come from Orwell's 1948-ish perspective? Or from Winston living under the Party’s rule? And where in that mess of a person is the bit that comes from Winston himself?

Like I said: this book left me with mixed feelings. Though the first part was undeniably boring, smart and interesting lines did pop up every so often. Were they straws at which I clamped to make reading it more bearable? I don't know. There were snippets that made me stop and think for a while and once or twice a description that I enjoyed. They weren't profound, deep insights that change your life. Rather, they're interesting, truthful sentences that seem to touch our own reality with some kind of hidden importance.

And then, 120 pages in, things changed. A plot emerged, things started happening, picking up the pace: 1984 became interesting again. I spent the entire first part of the book dragging myself through it, because certainly, this couldn't be all there was to this classic? Luckily, I was right! After about a third of the book, I genuinely started to enjoy it and it lasted almost a full 100 pages before I hit the next, smaller, slump.

At that point, Winston starts reading The Book, by public enemy Emanuel Goldstein. It is a text that reminds me most of something of a history/sociology textbook, and not one of the most interesting kind. At the start, it is interesting, mixing our own history as we know it, with the history of Winston's world. It provides some background and makes everything seem more realistic. However, the long stretches of Winston reading The Book become very boring very fast. After a while I found myself reading the words, but not even trying to comprehend what they were saying anymore.

I was afraid that this would be it and the interesting part of 1984 was over, but after a while, the fun started again. The second good part started with a big shock, some 90 pages before the end. Right before that happened, I remember thinking that all of the characters could've been shot through the head by the Thought Police and I wouldn't have cared.  Clearly, I was wrong. I just needed a bit of excitement and the right writing style to get me to care for them once more! It didn't get me in the place where you get invested emotionally though. Instead, I ended up reading along to the events towards the end of the book. And I got very interested as I did so!

I wish I could tell you more about those bits of the book that I did enjoy, because I feel this review is becoming a bit one-sided. However, I've got to admit that those less great parts do stand out in my memory, more than the bits I was enthusiastic about. Another thing is that in telling you more about the better parts, I'm afraid I'll spoil the story of the book.

I hope that I haven't been overly critical out of disappointment. All in all, I don't think I'd recommend reading it to anyone, which made me ultimately decide to give it only the two stars and not three. I wouldn't tell you not to read it if you wanted to. There really are interesting parts to it, such as the concepts of doublethink, newspeak etc. However, if you start reading this, expecting some 340 pages full of a good plot, realistic and animated characters and other things you might normally look for in a book, it won't be what you hoped for.

[theburningbookshelf-blog]

Oh, yes, my dear followers (and other interested parties), TBB is back! Even though there hasn't been a post on this blog for more than thirteen months, TBB is coming back to life.

Thirteen months is a long time and a lot has changed. For me, life is getting busier than ever - I'm moving cross-country* to my very first own place, tomorrow I'll be starting a summer job that's nearing full-time hours and soon my life as a university student will begin. 

Reading books takes time and writing about them takes some more, so I'm not promising super regular updates or long, detailed reviews every week. But as we speak, books (or a book, rather) is being read to be reviewed, ideas for other articles are bubbling to the surface and my participation in the first Dutch Readathon is in the works. And I'm hoping you'll be there reading this blog along the way. I really do!

Write you soon,

TBB

* Which, I must admit, amounts to about 200 km, here in the Netherlands.

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Review: The Dwarves by Markus Heitz ★★★★☆

I bought this book directly after the - unofficial - start of my summer vacation. I'd been eying it for a while and I decided to treat myself. Well, I can tell you this: a treat is exactly what it has been. A 730 page long one, to be precise! Don't you love that? When you've found a book you really like and it's actually long enough to keep you going for a while?

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Review: The House of the Mosque by Kader Abdolah ★★★★★

Today I'm going to tell you about The House of the Mosque. I'm very glad that this book (originally called Het Huis van de Moskee) has been translated into English, because this means that I can write a post on one of the best Dutch books I've read in a very long time.

In an interview, Abdolah (who is Iranian himself, but now lives in the Netherlands), said the following:

I wrote this book for Europe. It's about people, about art, about religion, about sex, about film, about the importance of radio and television. I'm pulling the curtains open and I'm showing the Islam as a way of life. The House of the Mosque is about the Islam. In recent years, the western world has gotten a one-sided representation of the Islam. But the aggressive face of the Islam is just one side, a dangerous one, but a limited one. With this book I want to show the mild Islam. It's a society in which religion and social life are connected.

I can say, without any doubt, that this goal has been met. I picked up this book, because I was interested in the Iranian Revolution. I didn't get it. At all. But wait, first I'll give you the basics: at the start of the book - before the Revolution sets in - Iran is ruled by the Shah, who's set the proces of westernization and secularization in motion. But then the Revolution hits Iran, the Shah gets overthrown and the Ayatollah Khomeini takes over. He completely reverses the Shah's policies and goes back even further, making Iran a state founded on a radical interpretation of the Islam. You may ask why I didn't get this? It's very simple: think of any other revolution. The French one, the Russian, the American. Any one you can think of. And now ask yourself: did it happen because people wanted to go back to how things were before? No, revolutions happen because people want things to change going forward, not because they want to go back to how things were fifty years ago. And yet the Iranian people wanted to go back to life without TV’s or radio, with veils, where religion was important once again. And so they did. Like I said, I didn't understand this. Because why would you want to go back to life without all these advantages? But by reading this book, I came to understand the sentiment of this revolution. Abdolah skilfully depicts Aga Djan's feelings for his country and it's culture and people. He sees that things are changing, and that he's losing 'his' Iran. In it's stead, comes a culture in which he feels lost, where the values and the religion that he holds dear are abandoned. Where he feels his identity and the one of his country are fading. It's like those images you 'can't unsee', only this time in a good way: after reading this book, I cannot understand how I ever didn't get why this revolution happened. For me, I think this book truly created that better understanding of the Islam, which Abdolah was talking about. Unfortunately for Aga Djan, though, the Iranian Revolution doesn't mean the end of his troubles by far. But that's something you'll have to read about for yourself. But there's more to this book than just that: Abdolah's writing is unique. To start with, he's an absolute master at making you understand what a certain character is about. By relating someone's background or a certain scene he makes you understand them in such a way that you haven't just read about it and know what motivates these people. No: you feel and really understand what moves them, without Abdolah explicitly telling you so. And even though there definitely are some characters who act wrongly - yes, even murders occur, though luckily those aren't as overly dramatized as they often are - all of of these characters get a 'fair' treatment. Abdolah doesn't pass judgement. He leaves that to us. He introduces none of them as 'bad people', but just tells us who they are. During the course of the book, you might come to hold them in a higher or lower esteem because of their actions, but because of that first introduction you already feel connected and emotionally invested. Next to that, his style of writing is very particular and special. Now, I've read the Dutch version and I don't know to what extent the English book is the same, but I'm assuming that whoever translated it has tried to preserve the original style. It's a very comfortable writing style that's easily readable but not irritatingly simple. It's reminiscent of the style of fairytales and I guess heavily influenced by the literature or folklore of Abdolah's origins. After all, the book ends with a letter written by one of the characters, stating that though his writing has changed languages, he still tries to incorporate the poetic spirit of his old language in his stories. And I think that is more than a little autobiographical. I could go on and on about what I love about this book, but what for me really tipped the scales is the fact that love just seems to ooze out of the pages of this book. And I don't mean that in the romantical sense. I'm talking about how the way Abdolah writes, gives away his love for his work, his country and his characters. I've never been one for ugly or coarse language and though the events that take place in the book could easily have gotten him to use such language, he didn't. Well, I think my verdict is clear: this book really is worth your time and money! I guess that for most people it wouldn’t be an obvious choice: a book not only originally written in Dutch, but by an Iranian writer too; a book on a subject that probably doesn't seem the most accessible or interesting to a lot of people. I hope that this review will change a few of your minds though, so you'll take a chance and read it.

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Midnight reading

Do you know the feeling? You've taken a lovely hot shower and put on your favourite pair of pyjamas afterwards. You've just managed to sneak in a bit of homework on which you were behind* and now it's getting a bit later than you'd planned. Not too late, more of a 'if I want to really get enough sleep for a change, I should go to bed now, but I'm not too tired yet' kind of time. All in all you're feeling quite well.

“I’m always amazed at friends who say they try to read at night in bed but always end up falling asleep. I have the opposite problem. If a book is good I can’t go to sleep, and stay up way past my bedtime, hooked on the writing. Is anything better than waking up after a late-night read and diving right back into the plot before you even get out of bed to brush your teeth?”

For me it's both one of the best and one of the worst things. I mean, obviously when this happens, you've stumbled across a good book. Or no, maybe not necessarily a good book (at least, that's not what I'd call the book I'm talking about right now), but at least a book you like. One you'll enjoy, or which is gripping, to say the very least. But on the other hand, you've just lost all control. And to what? To people who don't exist. Often to a world that doesn't even exist. And while you keep reading because you're enjoying the book and you want to know how it'll end, somewhere in the process, usually two or three hours past midnight, your enjoyment fades and instead that grip the book has on your mind changes from an embrace into a forceful grasp. I'm still gripped, but now I'm looking forward to the last page, even though I don't want the story to end. I know it's the only way I'll get to sleep though, and I'm getting so very tired. I know I could stop reading, but then again, I know I can’t. I won’t. And whilst I’m thinking about that, about once again falling for it and once again being retained by the world of the book I’m reading, I start wondering whether I even like reading that much. Isn’t this more of an obsessive and compulsive habit? But then the next page catches my eye and there goes my promise to myself that I’ll really stop on the end of this page. Because the book is so damn good and I love reading so shot the hell up. Am I the only one who experiences this? I think this is what would be called a love-hate relationship. I’m having a love-hate relationship with midnight reading. I’ve never realised it, but we’re frenemies, my books and me.** So honestly? I'm wondering whether I'm really making myself happy by doing what I'm doing right now. I think I might not start reading tonight, so I won't have to stop either. Maybe I'll just study whatever Livy had to say on the early days of Rome for some more time and after that I may just go to sleep. Or I may not. We'll see. * By the way: that’s why you haven’t heard of me much, lately. Currently I’m in the middle of my finals, so I’m very busy. Too busy to write stuff that isn’t school-related, I’m afraid. ** You’ve got no idea how bad saying that made me feel. So for honesty and guiltlessness sake (‘cause I do love my books), let’s change that into: we’re frenemies, me and the practice of reading books when I know it’s far too late to be both awake now and to be able to function in the morning. That sounds better, don’t you think?

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Review: Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson - ★★★★☆

Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson isn't the type of book I'd normally read. I read a lot of different things, but over the years, I've found that two types of books just aren't for me. The first: those where negativity plays too much of a role. The second: the scary ones. Guess which category Robopocalypse belongs to?

They are in your house. They are in your car. They are in the skies. Now they are coming for you.

Not very reassuring, right? But exactly befitting a story about an evil and brilliant artificial intelligence trying to take over the world by igniting a war between robots and humankind, nearly destroying us in the process. I don’t know whether I can say that I had fun reading this book, but I definitely liked it. It’s a good book and exactly scary enough. After I’d read the first of five parts, I put it away and I think that I nearly stopped reading out of fear. But then, in the end, after a few days I started reading again and I finished it almost without pausing. If it had been just the tiniest bit scarier, I would have stopped. But it wasn’t and so I didn’t. Reading the last four parts of the book, I really enjoyed it. I like how all the different people came together and how in the end they all were connected and played a brave part in destroying Archos. It is a book of heroes, about people rising to the occasion, and finding something in themselves they didn't know. And even now, while I’m typing this, I feel a faint feeling of fear rise up when I type the name of this super intelligent and evil computer. Archos. That’s what this book does, it installs this fear within you. Of course I know very well that this scenario isn't likely to happen anytime soon. I'm not scared that robots will take over our world. It’s a more general fear I feel. It’s a fear that I’ll carry with me for a few days and which then will fade. There's more to this book, though, than the tension and fear. Like I said: it was great how in the end everybody was connected. It’s like a sinister version of Love actually. The Love actually of death and violence, bravery and sacrifice. If you ask me, this is a sign of a writer's skill in envisioning their story. You’ve got all these different characters and they’ve all got different quirks. Their personalities aren’t developed in depth, but nevertheless I somehow felt like I got to know them. Or rather: I didn’t really get to know them, but I got a general idea of who they were and in this book, that was enough. Wilson made this work, because even though they aren't given in depth personalities, they do change during the New War. They become better people in all kinds of ways. In fact, that's one of the things I like most about the book. Take our narrator Cormac, who when we first meet him isn’t exactly the responsible type. He changes into someone who can fend for himself, who wants to protect his squad and who in the end is even OK with losing his life if that means that the war will be ended. And then there’s the Japanese mechanic, who at the start of the book is an elderly man, living in a home for old people, mocked at his workplace and in love with an old robot. He creates a stronghold for humans in the middle of Tokyo and helps free all of the humanoid robots, a huge help in ending the war. All in all, I'm really glad that I kept reading. Robopocalypse is unlike anything I remember reading and it was a great experience. It's a long time ago I got scared by reading a book and it's nice to be reminded to the effect the written word can have. This book definitely shook things up.

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Hanging on to Harry Potter

Pottermore has been open to the public for half a month now and a few days ago I decided to take a look. The opinions I heard or read of those who got into the limited beta version in July last year weren't always that positive. A friend of mine told me that she thought that it was fun, but not nearly as special or exciting as all of the marketing had made her expect it to be. Somewhere else I read the opinion that the new content was great, but that moving through all of the chapters and having to search for hidden items before that content got unlocked really wasn't that interesting.

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Death in our books

Death. In our highly controlled and safe world, it's still very much on our minds. Though we live in a time that's banned more and more deadly diseases, that's reduced the danger of life itself to a bare minimum and in which most of us will live to a ripe and old age, we continue to be fascinated by the concept that at one point we will cease to exist.

(Click on the image to take a better look.)

I was very surprised. Death suddenly seemed to be everywhere in the literary world. Or was it? Maybe the Man Booker Prize had met a very morbid judging panel this year. So I set out to my bookshelf to find out what I had slowly started to suspect. I have never realised it, but of my own books - excluding those which I read when I was younger - I'd say that about seventy-five to eighty percent deserves an immediate 'yes' to the question whether it's linked to this theme. In an additional five to ten percent wasn't that clear, but still, when I thought about it, the book wasn't void of it.

The slow death of the primary character. A dead parent, sibling or friend. Dystopian novels that feature all kinds of horrible deaths. Wars. Droughts. Illnesses. Executions. Murders. Oh, and I'd almost forget your classical murder mysteries. The list goes on and on. So yes, apparently we are into fictional people dying. If you don't believe me, take a look at your own books. Probably you'll see that you too have read way more about it than you'd expect. But why? Why do we like to read about these things? Maybe books featuring deaths are so successful because the death of a loved one is an excruciatingly painful thing. Because after all, with all our knowledge and all our power, we still can't prevent that once all lives must end. And all of us know how hard that is. So maybe that's it, because death is just so damn relatable. Because it's a way for the author to kick the intensity of a book up a notch and because it's a good way for them to make us feel what our characters feel. Because it's a theme so compelling and universal. Or maybe it is because unconsciously we feel that we need to be reminded of our vulnerabilities. Maybe books send us the message to live right here and right now, because anything could happen. Spend time with the people you love doing the things you like. Don't waste it. They - or you - could go at any time. Or maybe we want to be reminded of those vulnerabilities for the kick. Yes, we're glad that we don't live in an age where we have to chase and kill our own mammoth and that the Black Death isn't around anymore. But does that mean that we don't want to read about it? Definitely a no. Or, lastly, maybe it's just that we haven't yet figured it out. That the concept of us leaving this earth and whatever happens next - or doesn't happen, depending on your own beliefs - is hard to come to terms with. I don't necessarily mean emotionally. However hard that is, we might also find it hard to imagine that one day all evidence of our existence will have disappeared. For some people it might be in fifty years, for other important and world changing individuals thousands, but one day our life will come to an end for a second time. We will disappear completely. And as all of us book lovers know, books can be an excellent way to come to terms with something or to start to understand something that we didn't before. So maybe it is for one of these reasons that death, not exactly a cheerful topic, is everywhere when we read. Or maybe not. I bet there are a hundred more reasons why.

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Review: Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel - ★★☆☆☆

As Bring up the Bodies will soon be in store, I thought it would be interesting to revisit its predecessor: Wolf Hall. I've seen a lot of positive reviews and people who were either wildly enthusiastic or utterly disappointed. For me though, that wasn't the case. My opinion of the book is most easily described with one word: meh.

When I first picked the book up in the bookstore, it wasn't because I had heard great things about it or because I was that interested in yet another book about Henry VIII. (He has been rather popular lately.) It was because of the cover art, especially because of the Tudor rose on it. I thought the book might be about the Wars of the Roses and as I didn't know a thing about those, I thought it might be interesting. Here in Holland schools don't teach us a lot about the civil wars of other countries. So when I picked up the book, I found out that wasn't the case, but I still ended up buying it. And that is where it gets interesting.

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Christopher Paolini's advice