Manzaradan Parçalar - Orhan Pamuk

Bu makaleler okuyabildiğimden ve anlatabildiğimden çok şaşırdım.  Sözlük çok kullanmam gerek ve yavaş yavaş gelişiyorum ama yapıyorum.  Orhan Pamuk'un dili çok açık ve çok güzel.  Istanbul hakkinda fikirleri çok ilginç.

The Physics of Sorrow - Georgi Gospodinov

A Bulgarian writer.  His novel has the crazy, rambling, circus-like quality that eastern european cinema can have at times.  Basically the story of the author/protagonist growing up in Bulgaria of the 70s, 80s and 90s.  He jumps around in history, between characters and other creatures, philosophizes, makes political commentary, tells side stories.   The book has digressions titles  SIDE STORY.

The myth of the Minotaur is central to the book in some way, but turned on its head.  The Minotaur as victim, as a sad story deserving of sympathy.  The Minotaur as Everyman lost in the labyrinth of life?  Betrayed by the heros, by the big people, by the big ideas and dreams?

He develops a couple of interesting ideas close to my heart.

One is around page 168, where he proposes a hierarchy and a religion of the ephemeral, of the fleeting and the living, instead of the eternal and the dead.  The title of the section is BUFFALO SHIT, OR THE SUBLIME IS EVERYWHERE.  He points out how all the drama, all the sturm und drang of history would be meaningless if the ephemeral were valued.  You can't fight a war about something that will quickly fade.

"Exactly.  Man is the measure of all things.  And everything that exceeds this measure  and lasts longer and remains after his death is inhuman by its very nature, and a source of sorrow and discord as a rule."  p. 171

"In the small and insignificant - that's where life hides, that's where it builds its nest.  Funny what things are left to twinkle in the end, the last glimmer before darkness."  p. 247  (He then goes on to describe two beautifully insignificant sublime moments from his life.)

Partly the result of having lived through the disaster of two big, timeless ideas or ideologies - Communism and Pirate Capitalism?

The last section of the book is called An Elementary Physics of Sorrow.  It is a collection of short notes and thoughts that are quite sharp at times.

Midnight Sun - Jo Nesbo

Second novel I've read by him.  He is a very tight writer; not particularly deep, but with a great sense of oddball characters and situations.  Good escapist or reading holiday material.

A Concise History of Bulgaria - R. J. Compton

A readable overview of historical Bulgaria, from the early days when it was one of the significant European cultures to the modern era where it ended as a minor player.
The modern story seems to be one of being frozen in time, sidetracked, treading water.  The Ottoman period was a period of stagnation in most areas of Bulgarian life - there was some industrial development, but most of the economy and society remained static.  Then there were the Balkan Wars, where the focus was on territory and borders, not development. Next there was the 1st World War on the wrong side, followed by the next war, also on the losing side.  Finally, there was the the Communist Bloc, and the low quality, unsustainable industrial development of the Soviet period that did not keep pace with modern technological and economic developments.  Today, there is the leap into the mysteries, vagaries and sharks of modern western capitalism.  A sad story...

I am also intrigued by this issue of Macedonia - the battle amongst Balkan powers for control of the territory, and also the Macedonian's long struggle for independence.  Where did this struggle come from?  How did it originate?
This Macedonian obsession seems to have sidetracked Balkan regimes from more significant developments and issues for decades.


To find:
something on the Macedonian independence struggle

The Piano Tuner - Daniel Mason

I enjoyed reading this book.  There are some marvellous descriptive passages of the English piano tuner's first impressions of Burma in the late 1800s, both the city and the back county.  Very evocative.  As you read though, there are some small annoyances, some little niggling points around the development of the storyline.  After, you realize some of the main turning points and significant unfolding events are basically delivered in one line.  The one that jumps out the most is the sentence that states the piano tuner has been in the piano village for three months - as you read, you have no sense of the passage of this time.  Other foreshadowings are also crudely done in one sentence earlier in the book.  They seem odd at the time, stand out a bit as sentences or ideas, and you only realize later where they were heading.  A bit awkward...
I also wondered why the author was revisiting this particular moment of long-past British colonialism, and it doesn't really become clear, beyond the usual remarking of the blindness of the colonizer to the local culture, environment and even the people as humans.

There is also a funny parallel to Heart of Darkness, both in the outcome and in the rivier journey.  Not sure if it is annoying or not - tend towards annoying as I don't see any critical or insightful thoughts emerging from this parallel.

Blood on Snow - Jo Nesbo

Norwegian roman noir/crime author.
Story well-told from the perspective of one of the characters who obviously has some unusual (not violent or extreme) personality flaws.  He is essentially a contract killer but tells everything in such a matter-of-fact tone.

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