Reading is sexy VII
["Helen Keller Reading" c. 1904 via Guarda chi legge]
5. Zadie Smith's White Teeth. Zadie Smith IS as good as they say. I like On Beauty better, but that just means she's improving, from this, her impressive debut. The novel tells the story of two unlikely friends from England and Bangladesh, who make friends in a tank in WWII and then again thirty years later. It tells the stories of their Jamaican and Bangladeshi wives and their English children. It tells the story of twins, separated. The novel interweaves their stories and tackles religious fundamentalism versus secularism, first and second generation immigrant experience, classicism, communication between the sexes, coming-of-age, infidelity, protest, pot, biotechnology and one genetically-engineered mouse. That and it is hysterically funny, insightful and well-written.
36. Charlotte Gray's Alexander Graham Bell: Relunctant Genius. blythechild asked me why I would bother to buy such a book. She doesn't understand how I have been a fan of Alexander Graham Bell since I visited his home on Cape Breton Island, as a child. The biography places the love story between he and his wife at the centre. She was obviously integral to his life and invaluable to him. She kept him grounded. She was the practical one who made sure he pursued patents. You might not know that the invention of the telephone followed naturally from his fascination with hearing and teaching the deaf. His father invented "Visible Speech" a notation system which allowed an human vocalization to be depicted. Alec used this to teach the deaf. His own mother was deaf and his wife was a former deaf pupil. In addition to the telephone, he was a pioneer of flight and his many inventions included the photophone, integral parts of the gramophone, tetrahedral kites and magnificent hydrofoils (which could beat the contemporary speed record and were decades ahead of their time)! He founded Science and added photographs to his father-in-law's failing National Geographic Magazine. He developed a metal-detector with telephone receiver to try to find the bullet in President Garfield (and received honorary doctorates in medicine). He was a life-long advocate for lip-reading instruction for the deaf because he believed they should be integrated into hearing society (contentious to some), friend to Helen Keller, a father and grandfather. He was the sort of person, who invented an automatic signal routing system for telephones before the turn of the 20th century and refused to patent it so that he would not put the telephone operators out of work. He was a fascinating man; anyone who casually observes in the 1890s that in the future telephone signals might be carried by light and mail sent "electrically" is a genius in my book.
37. Milorad Pavić The Dictionary of the Khazars: A Lexicon Novel (female edition: one paragraph is different in the male edition). I stumbled upon this book at She Said Boom. This is the sort of Borgesian fantasy that is my sort of thing. The 'novel', translated from Serbian, is in the form of three inter-related dictionaries or encyclopedias about the Khazars and their sudden conversion to Judaism (or maybe Christianity or Islam?) around the 8th century BC. Each dictionary represents the scholarship from a different tradition (Jewish, Christian or Muslim). Or at least, that was the case of the "original" dictionary published in 1691, possibly destroyed by the Inquisition. The 1984 edition includes what has been salvaged and entries on the writers of the dictionaries. There isn't a traditional style plot but intertwined stories emerge. The dictionary can be read in many different ways; following the pages sequentially, following cross-referenced entries, reading about a single event or person according to each tradition... History, art, folklore, archeology, mystery, satans and shaitans who have a single nostril (you have been forewarned) with the occasional vampire, gollum or love story. Quite amazing.
38. Drop Dead Cute: The New Generation of Women Artists in Japan by Ivan Vartanian. Interesting profile of ten contemporary female Japanese artists with very pretty pictures.
39. I started Umberto Eco's The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana yesterday- this illustrated novel is the tale of a 60ish rare book seller who must attempt to reconstruct his personal memory post-stroke.
In other news:
I am disappointed that we aren't making the planned (drunken?) field-trip to Ikea today and it has been postponed to Wednesday, so I'm going to buy me some consolation Sue's Thai food. Mmmm... ginger shrimp. I've made a deal with Dimitri; I will give my Ikea stuffed rat toy to Orbit (via blythechild & synap- unlike Orbit, Di thinks Ratimus is ugly!?) if he gets rid of the hideous Serta numbered sheep stuffie and promises to keep the Lindsey Lohan poster in the closet of the music room. Should I see LiLo elsewhere, I think I know a happy little JRT who might like a sheepie friend...
My mother is going to Istanbul tomorrow, the lucky duck. She's hiking through Turkey. I am impressed at her gumption and now understand where the wanderlust gene came from.
I think I shall have to pester the boss about Siberia, or I might begin to resent those who are in Chile, Korea and Turkey. ;)