Some Summer Reading

First sentences:

THE NAME OF THE WORLD by Denis Johnson
Since my early teens I've associated everything to do with college, "the academic life," with certain images born towards me, I suppose, from the TV screen, in particular from the films of the 1930's they used to broadcast relentlessly when I was a boy, and especially from a single scene: Fresh-faced young people come in from autumn night to stand around the fireplace in the home of a beloved professor.

This was a Pen/Faulkner Award finalist, but I picked it up because I noticed that the author lives in Bonner's Ferry, ID. I might have liked this story of a middle aged man grieving the loss of his wife and daughter more at a different time in my life. Found myself skimming.

THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING by Milan Kundera
The idea of eternal return is a mysterious one, and Nietzsche has often perplexed other philosophers with it: to think that everything recurs as we once experienced it, and that the recurrence itself recurs ad infinitum!
Funny, but reading that first sentence I am suprised how much I loved, loved, LOVED this book.

A HOUSE FOR MR. BISWAS by V.S. Naipaul

Ok, sorry, but I returned this to the library before I wrote down the 1st sentence. I think it was a pretty good one, too. This is yet another book I didn't finish, but would like to sometime. I actually was enjoying it but have too many other things I want to read for upcoming discussions.

THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE by Muriel Spark
The boys, as they talked to the girls from Marcia Blaine School, stood on the far side of their bicycles holding the handlebars, which established a protective fence of bicycle between the sexes, and the impression that at any moment the boys were likely to be away.

I've got to try some more Muriel Spark. This is good writing. I have the distinct memory of lying on my bedroom floor in Mich reading this as a teenager and being very impressed. I don't reread too many books, but I've forgotten most of the details and only remember the feeling. And it's a July discussion choice.

DROWN by Junot Diaz
We were on our way to the colmado for an errand, a beer for my tio, when Rafa stood still and tilted his head, as if listening to a message I couldn't hear, something beamed in from afar.

That's the first sentence from the first of 10 short storis, Ysrael. They are all good.

THE BOY NEXT DOOR by Irene Sabatini
Two days after I turned fourteen the son of our neighbor set his stepmother alight.

This was a May discussion book, but I'm finally getting around to it. I've been doing far too much suduko, and not enough reading lately. So far, I like it. It's set in Zimbabwe soon after independence was gained.