Books
Chico Buarque’s Leite derramado (Spilled Milk) was sometimes a pleasure to read and sometimes it left me really confused (the ending). It might be a coincidence but both novels I’ve read for my Contemporary Brazilian Literature Class so far were fragmented, highly subjective retrospective accounts of characters‘ lives. I think I liked Buarque’s better because its structure allowed more room to tell the story whereas Michel Laub felt like he needed to keep every incident to about a page and a half. Plus, I was really expecting to like Buarque because my mom likes him, not necessarily as an author but as a singer. I liked the contradictions towards the end and though I am not a great reader of Portuguese language books, even I could tell that Buarque has a great command of language. That alone made the book worth reading.
Matze loves the novellas by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt and I bought him Kleine Eheverbrechen (Petits crimes conjugaux; Partners in Crime) not knowing it was a play. It’s been on my nightstand for about three weeks and the other day I decided to read it because the premise sounded promising but it was a disappointment. I was expecting something like Oscar or Monsieur Ibrahim and I got an unhappily married couple who kept lying to each other because they were unhappy and couldn’t sit down and just talk.
Dr. Gruber recommended Jen Fuksong Lee’s The End of East to me last November and I finally got to it. It was okay but nothing out of the ordinary and I’m really glad we ended up reading other novels in class instead but it was okay and once I got into it, it was an easy enough read. Some stuff disturbed me (the whole bartender subplot made no sense at all!) but I’m glad that I got around to reading it.
This week, I’m rereading The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (expect me to read lots of Atwood in the coming months; I'm taking a class on her) and The Merchant of Venice because Matze and I are going to the theater (I'm so excited!). Other than that, I don’t know. Probably Porcupines and China Dolls by Robert Arthur Alexie (no relation to Sherman though they’re both Natives, Robert’s Canadian).
Matze loves the novellas by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt and I bought him Kleine Eheverbrechen (Petits crimes conjugaux; Partners in Crime) not knowing it was a play. It’s been on my nightstand for about three weeks and the other day I decided to read it because the premise sounded promising but it was a disappointment. I was expecting something like Oscar or Monsieur Ibrahim and I got an unhappily married couple who kept lying to each other because they were unhappy and couldn’t sit down and just talk.
Dr. Gruber recommended Jen Fuksong Lee’s The End of East to me last November and I finally got to it. It was okay but nothing out of the ordinary and I’m really glad we ended up reading other novels in class instead but it was okay and once I got into it, it was an easy enough read. Some stuff disturbed me (the whole bartender subplot made no sense at all!) but I’m glad that I got around to reading it.
This week, I’m rereading The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (expect me to read lots of Atwood in the coming months; I'm taking a class on her) and The Merchant of Venice because Matze and I are going to the theater (I'm so excited!). Other than that, I don’t know. Probably Porcupines and China Dolls by Robert Arthur Alexie (no relation to Sherman though they’re both Natives, Robert’s Canadian).