Book List Set 1

This my personal book list: all the books I want to OWN and READ.

Here's my first set.  I'm hoping to have a copy and read all of them Before This Year Ends.

1.  A Dance with Dragons, George R.R. Martin

The fifth book in Martin's epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire.  Need I say more?

2.  The Complete Earthsea Novels by Ursula K. LeGuin (A Wizard of Earthsea ,The Tombs of Atuan, The Farthest Shore, Tehanu: The Last Book of Earthsea, The Other Wind)


Taoist, Feminist, Environmental, Magical. I can't wait to read all five books.

3.   Kokoro, Natsume Soseki


Loneliness, Guilt, Self-hatred, "the vanity of Life", Youth, Old Age, transition from Japanese Meiji society to the modern era (which I'm so fascinated with), Love, Isolation. Kokoro literally translates to "heart" or "heart of the matter'. 

4.  Luka and the Fire of Life, Salman Rushdie


Lightheartedness, Magic, Love, Fables, Allegory, Myth, Fantasy, Freedom, Truth ... Salman Rushdie explains it better:  "As well as the central theme of life and death, Luka explores in, I hope, suitably fabulous and antic fashion, things I have thought about all my life: the relationships between the world of imagination and the "real" world, between authoritarianism and liberty, between what is true and what is phony, and between ourselves and the gods that we create. Younger readers do not need to dwell on these matters. Older readers may, however, find them satisfying."

5.  Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro


Hope, Repression, Love triangle, Cloning, Science Fiction, Friendship.

6.  White Teeth and On Beauty, Zadie Smith


White Teeth -- "race, sex, class, history, and the minefield of gender politics, and such is her wit and inventiveness that these weighty subjects seem effortlessly light." - Amazon.com review


On Beauty -- "characters such as Claire Malcolm, an east coast poet/intellectual portrayed with a stunningly accurate feeling for the type. Or Carl, a sharp, touching study of a ghetto teenager making good, done with all the volatile political and sexual currents set in motion by such a progress. Or Howard Belsey himself ... whose limitless capacity for folly keeps deepening and strangely sweetening his character." The Guardian review

7.  The Lake, Banana Yoshimoto

8.  The Edible Woman, Margaret Atwood

9.  The Tigér's Wife, Tea Obreht

10.  The Trial, Franz Kafka

11.  The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame

12.  The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston

13.  Woman at Point Zero, Nawal El Sadaawi

14.  Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto and The Visible Man, Chuck Klosterman

15.  The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Michael Chabon

Excerpts from Killing Yourself to Live by Chuck Klosterman

Excerpts from Banana Yoshimoto's N.P

From page 15, Kano's observation on Otohiko's appearance:

From page 191, Kano, looking at Otohiko again:

I have a bone-deep love for this book.  It consumes me.

Poets Lie (both literal meanings)

Today's dose of penned drumfire:

Crispin's tirade. After narrating the story of poet Mutya Dimatahimik, who, during a protest rally against Marcos, lay down in front of an oncoming tank. She was 5 months pregnant. The tank only stopped when it was only a few feet from her. The soldiers inside the tank dragged her aside and beat her unconscious. She nearly lost her child.

"Truly romantic bullshit, in retrospect ... And yet 'No lyric has ever stopped a tank,' so said Seamus Heaney. Auden said that 'poetry makes nothing happen.' Bullshit! I reject all that wholeheartedly! What do they know about the mechanics of tanks! How can anyone estimate the ballistic quality of words? Invisible things happen in intangible moments. What should keep us writing is precisely that possibility of explosions. If not, what then?" - Crispin Salvador, from Ilustrado by Miguel Syjuco, page 205.

KABOOM! Right through the heart.