When I travel, I love to bring home books as souvenirs. I try to make my choices reflect the place I’m visiting. This trip has been no different! Here are the books that will be making the trek home with me this time: As I look at my purchases all together, I realize it’s a …
Tag Archives: international fiction
Thoughts on “Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress” by Dai Sijie
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie is a slim volume, coming in under 200 pages, but it does not feel short or insubstantial. Rather, it seems to me to be a study in how to write a novel that contains precisely what it must contain to achieve the author’s endpoint and nothing …
Continue reading “Thoughts on “Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress” by Dai Sijie”
Thoughts on “Half Life” by Roopa Farooki
I just finished the most beautiful book. I picked up Half Life by Roopa Farooki because it was compared, on the back of the galley, to Jhumpa Lahiri and Slumdog Millionaire. But after reading the book, I don’t think it’s quite fair to hang its success on its similarities to other famous Indian authors; this …
Thoughts on “Suite Francaise” by Irene Nemirovsky (Audiobook)
Well, I bit the bullet and finished Suite Francaise on audio today. When I’d stopped the day before, I had a feeling that something terrible was about to happen, and I just couldn’t bear more suffering to be inflicted on the poor characters. It did not go the way I feared. On the contrary, I …
Continue reading “Thoughts on “Suite Francaise” by Irene Nemirovsky (Audiobook)”
A Brief Audiobook Update
I’ve fallen behind on my audiobook reporting! When last I posted on the topic, I was listening to The Graveyard Book, written and read by Neil Gaiman. The story is quite good; intriguing, with those odd bits that make it Gaimanesque. There were a few parts that made me say, “Huh?” But most of his books …