Browsing the Bookshelves

Ok, I confess, I'm a sucker for novels with whacky titles...like this one...

The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break by Simon Sherrill

I can't deny that I really enjoyed reading this - I raced right through it in a few hours. At the same time, however, I think it is a little disappointing. I love the concept - the Minotaur of Knosses, still alive and now living within society somewhere deep in the American South. The possibilities promised by such an premise are endless: unfortunately, Sherrill simply fails to deliver. Here is no exploration of immortality or historicity, no hilarious misunderstandings, very little plot and absolutely no use of the dynamic between fantasy and reality which itself should have been able to sustain the novel. The Minotaur is a an engaging character, and the picture of his loneliness and isolation elegant and touching. His friends and work colleagues are well-drawn and interesting characters - no one could fail to be repelled by Shane and his sidekick Mike, or the way in which they exploit the Minotaur's insecurity - but it's not enough to raise this engaging and easy to read novel above the average.

If you'd like to read this book, I'll send you my copy. You can request it through either Bookcrossing or Bookmooch. Strictly first come first served. This book has now been given away.

Ok, so I've taken my eye off the ball a little and am somewhat late with this, but the sequel to The White Masai, Reunion in Barsaloi is now available in the shops!  Corinne Hofmann's account of her obsession with a Masai Warrior and her attempts to live with him in Kenya caused quite a stir last year...and now the next installment is ready and waiting for those eager to follow her exploits as she returns to Kenya.

It must be my week for books with odd titles. I read 'Death and the Penguin' earlier this week. Next up on (or perhaps I should say next off) mount-to-be-read is 'The Minotaur Takes and Cigarette Break' - a book grabbed from a fellow bookcrosser at a recent meet purely for the title. Intriguing, hey? Well, I'll tell you about it when I've read it.

Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov

Kurkov’s understated humour and perfect, deadpan style makes this quirky little story, full of quirky characters, a gem.  Death and the Penguin is the nectar of booklovers and Misha, a penguin rescued from a struggling zoo, is one of the most animated, engaging and touching characters in contemporary fiction. But there’s more to Kurkov’s writing than a sideways laugh at human foibles. Death of Penguin shows many pictures of loneliness and human isolation.  Viktor is an aspiring writer but lacks the energy to follow his dreams and, by settling to bread today and giving up on the idea of jam tomorrow, finds himself drawn into a mafiaesque world of crime and assassination in the chill starkness of post-Soviet Kiev.  Misha comes to live with him when the local zoo can no longer afford to feed him. Both are lonely, Viktor isolated from human society and Misha alone amid it.  Yet it is Misha who seems able to make strong relationship – first with Sonia, a little girl who comes to live with Viktor when her father is swept away into oblivion by his life of crime and then with the reader: who cannot fail to adore the quite, reliable, predictable animal, or to delight in his pleasure in fish and cold bathes, or sorrow over his inability to adjust to life in a climate so much warmer than his native land.

Here too is a stark, if one-sided, portrayal, of life in the former Soviet state of Ukraine. And it’s not a nice life. It’s cold, it’s hard and seemingly pointless. Deprived of the structure of the state, each seems to struggle to embrace with vigour the concept of democratic freedom. What Death of a Penguin amounts to is a strong indictment of a political reform which has left a population, bereft of communism community, without any societal fabric at all: without hope, without security and unable to realise the promise of liberty. This book is very funny. It’s very sad. And it’s very, very good.

Pure co-incidence that I'm posting this on a Sunday... does moral philosophy allow for co-incidence?

The Sunday Philosophy Club by Alexander McCall Smith

A light and gentle mystery, engagingly written in an easy and accessible style. Isabel Dalhousie, editor of a philosophical journal, witnesses a young man fall to his death. Haunted by the memory of a young life wasted, she begins to inquire about his life and friends and finds herself drawn into a tangle of insider dealing and sexual entanglement, while her beloved niece becomes engaged to the wrong man and Isabel herself develops inappropriate feelings for the right man!

This is an enjoyable read - I particularly liked the way it evoked Edinburgh New Town: reading the novel was like walking around my memories of this glorious city. But the mystery itself is understated throughout the novel, and I found the interspersement of philosophical jottings pretentious and distracting rather than complementary.

BBC Radio 4's Excess Baggage carried a feature on Jane Austen this morning, talking particularly about her travel habits, the places associated with her and how those placing where captured or reflected in her writing. There's a little bit about the programme on the website, and for the next fortnight you can download the programme and listen to it at your leisure:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/excessbaggage/