Pinch and a punch...
March was not a totally fruitless month for me. I read these books last month:
I Claudius by Robert Graves
http://www.islandlabs.com/countdown-pocket-pc.htm
Excellent book. Highly recommended for anybody interested in the Roman History in general and the crookedness and deceitfulness of the human ambition in particular.
Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
http://www.amazon.com/Kafka-Shore-Au...054778&sr=1-10
Very complex mythopoeic construction of a novel collaborating both oriental and occidental myths and philosophy which wrap themselves round the narrative like a twin helix. His use of the occidental myths become as ostentatious to us living in the West as, I am sure, the occidental concepts of the soul would have sounded to the average Japanese readers. Could have been made less effortless and elaborate. If you want to employ the "mythical method" you've got to be as effortless and artless as Joyce, anything else and your book would turn into a lecture or a Wikipedia article. A fast-paced page-turner though (can't say the same about Joyce's book!).
The Blind Owl by Sadeq Hedayat
http://www.angelfire.com/rnb/bashiri.../blindowl.html
If you like decadent, nightmarish and surrealistic literature, the above novella must be your cup of tea. Don't be put off by the exotic writer. The book is more exotic than you would anticipate, still it belongs up there with the dark European and American writings of Lautreamont and Poe. The whole story is a nightmare and nothing good happens at all.
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
http://www.amazon.com/Road-Oprahs-Bo...7055678&sr=1-1
Style is the man! Extremely style-conscious writing, every word oozes death, desolation, destruction and despair. American 'Pilgrim's Progress.'
The Sun also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
http://www.amazon.com/Sun-Also-Rises...7056361&sr=8-1
I am more than half way through this book and am finding it difficult to get into it. I once adored Hemingway, maybe the passion is gone! Slow and heavy going.
The 3rd month of the Year of Reading Proust sped by and I am still stuck on Within a Budding Grove. Feeling very guilty about it. Managed to read hardly fifty pages of it in March. Not nice, not very nice at all!
So what did the forum members read in March, then?