Tag: Tom Rachman

Distracted by Other Books

Posted June 5, 2018 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Monthly Reading / 6 Comments

My Thoughts and Reading in May 2018

When I first came to reading I was not sure what I liked and I turned to the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die list to help me. I saw myself as a literary explorer (hence my previous blog name) and I was willing to try anything and everything. With this in mind I joined a real life book club as a way to explore and practice talking about literature. Fast forward to now, and I have found my niche and I know what I like, so now sometimes book club feels like a chore more than a joy. Having to read The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart by Holly Ringland for May and The Italian Teacher by Tom Rachman for June have been challenging. It feels like they are picking pretty covers but the content has not been that desirable, for me anyway. I want more from my literature than what is provided in these novels. I feel like The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart was too similar to so many other stories, like The Choke, Nest and Deep Water; all three were novels read because of the book club. I do love being the one that dislikes the books but at what point does it stop being worth attending? I do not plan to quit, but I have been thinking about this since I have not enjoyed a pick in a very long time.

Besides my contemplations on book clubs, I have been thinking about the Man Booker International prize as well. I am very pleased to see Flights win; I thought it was an amazing book. I was able to complete the entire longlist except two books which I might read later but I feel a little burnt out by the experience. While I loved being part of a community reading these books and it really sparked my passion for blogging again I felt very restricted by the task. I am very much a mood reader and to have assigned books can put me in a reading slump. This is not to say I would not attempt to read the longlist again in the future. I just hope to have read some of the books on the list next time. Out of all the books on the list Die, My Love was the one I still think about but I also loved The 7th Function of Language and Frankenstein in Baghdad.

Mexican literature seems to be the flavour of the month having read both Like Water for Chocolate and Faces in the Crowd. There is something about Latin American magical realism that seems to work for me, something that I have not found in other forms of magical realism. I have not been able to put my finger on why I enjoy it more but I will keep exploring. I absolutely adored Faces in the Crowd, which is a book you might hear me talk about in the near future. I think Valeria Luiselli might be one of those authors I will be watching closely in the future. I did read The Story of My Teeth but it was not until I read Faces in the Crowd that I realised just how brilliant she is.

Also this month I read Cop Hater, an old school police procedural and Lullaby, a novel that felt like the author was letting her own fears play out on the page. The final book I want to talk about is Packing My Library. I loved The Library at Night by Alberto Manguel and I expected that Packing My Library would bring me the same amount of joy. Though one book was able to blend his personal narrative eloquently with the history of the library, the other just felt more like digressions from his topic. To be fair the subtitle to Packing My Library is An Elegy and Ten Digressions, so maybe I should have expected this. I love reading books about books but I tend to enjoy the ones that are able to blend the personal with something more which is normal literary criticism.

I went a little overboard with my book buying this month and I told myself it was mainly for my podcast. I do not know how this works but I will defend myself by saying that yes, some are for my podcast and most of them have been read now as well. I do not think I was distracted by other books this month. This might be because I am currently housesitting and only have a handful of books to choose from. I thought it was a rather slow reading month for me as well, but this turned out to be untrue. I was sure I spent too much time watching Netflix instead of reading but the statistics prove otherwise.

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Monthly Review – May 2013

Posted May 31, 2013 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Monthly Reading / 0 Comments

As May comes to a close, like all months, I want to have a quick look at what happened. First of all I managed to get fully up to date with my reviews; a few months ago I was about 20 reviews behind, waiting to be posted. Now when I finish a book the review will go up within a few days (sometimes more) and this frees me up to do other bookish posts. This is so exciting because I really like to write my thoughts about the world of literature without being confined to reviews. Also as you can see we are smack in the middle of being green with envy of everyone attending the Book Expo of America (BEA). I’m participating in Armchair BEA again and this will hopefully mean new blogs and new people to talk to. I’m also currently overseas so I’ve scheduled all these posts, I still have access to internet but I wanted to be free to comment and read instead of writing blog posts.

As for this month, the book club theme was Supernatural and we got to read the classic Victorian Gothic novella Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. My review went up yesterday and there have been some interesting discussions about the book and its influences in modern pop culture over at Goodreads if you’ve missed it. Next month’s book is going to be a little obscure, something I’ve not heard of; I’m really looking forward to diving into The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy.

Last month I was in the middle of a reading slump so I was worried that May would be a terrible month for me but I’m pleased to say the slump didn’t last long. I was able to read heaps of great books including Invitation to a Beheading, Main Street and The People of Forever Are Not Afraid. Interesting enough the highlight of the month was none of those books, but a reread of The Great Gatsby; I just enjoyed returning to that novel and then picking it apart trying to understand it. I would love to know what your highlights of the month were or even what you read this month.

My Monthly Reading

The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman

Posted May 24, 2013 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Contemporary / 0 Comments

The Imperfectionists by Tom RachmanTitle: The Imperfectionists (Goodreads)
, 2010
Pages: 277
Buy: Amazon, Book Depository (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

With the war on terror in Afghanistan and Iraq, climate change, the economy and constant tragedies and crime, a newspaper has plenty of material to fill its columns. But for the staff of this international paper based in Rome, the real stories are not the ones on the front page but the ones that happen in their own life. The Imperfectionists is a quirky novel about the people that write and read this newspaper.

My first thought of this novel was, this is going to be the newspaper equivalent of A Visit from the Goon Squad and in some parts it is, but I actually enjoyed this book. Don’t get me wrong, A Visit from the Goon Squad has some positives to it and a lot of people enjoyed it, but for me I just think it was over hyped and you get to know a character and then the novel moves onto something different. This is a problem with The Imperfectionist as well but I got this sense that each little story came to a relatively decent close; this is tiny little stories to give you a small insight into each life. These stories don’t really make up an overall plot; that happens between each chapter when you learn a little more about the overall rise of this paper.

This novel mainly focuses on the newspaper industry, founded in the late fifties, in a time where the paper is still the primary source of news for most people. This novel tracks the changing time and the effect it has on the people that work for this paper. Television and the twenty four hour news channels had a huge effect on the newspaper industry but this paper managed to stay in business and now with the information age and the internet they are really struggling to remain relevant. This newspaper refused to create a website and insisted on sticking to the old ways and this turns out to be their downfall.

Each member of the staff that show up in the chapters of the book have their own issues to deal with as well; love, relationships, parenthood and normal everyday life. The thing I enjoyed about this book was each character was unique and handled life differently but then all of them had their own issues to deal with that were more important than the problems facing the newspaper they worked for. Sure they worried about their jobs but life has its own challenges and these are what are explored with the newspaper industry decays.

This works like a collection of short stories, each have their own plot but then in between  each one there it the main plot which follows the newspaper from conception to where it is today. I really liked the way this was done; it felt like each story wasn’t irrelevant to the overall plot. Their names pop up and you have a sense of understanding that person enough to know just how they may feel. Each little story is different, but they are told in the same third person style so they seem to tie together really well.

There are some problems with this novel as well, sometimes you want more from a character you like and sometimes I found myself getting bored. As an overall novel I did end up enjoying it; I found myself racing through this book and that is rare for me when it comes to short stories. I don’t know much about author Tom Rachman; I know his has written another short story but not another novel. I would be interested to see how he goes with a follow up novel and see how he approaches it. The Imperfectionist was enjoyable but I don’t think I would recommend it to anyone, unless they want something similar to of A Visit from the Goon Squad.