JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Our last Bibliophibians Reading Group discussion for the year was held at Tin-Aw Art Gallery last Saturday. We watched Nicolas Roeg’s film of Don’t Look Now, then had a brief discussion of the Daphne Du Maurier story. Shortly afterwards we learned that Nicolas Roeg had died. My useless clairvoyance strikes again. (And then Bernardo Bertolucci died, so I’m going to watch The Conformist again.)

We all agreed to take a break in December and have our next meeting in January, when everyone still believes they can fulfill their New Year’s resolution to read more books. As for the book assignment, the nominees, presented here with the help of our bookrest Drogon, were:

The Makioka Sisters by Junichiro Tanizaki

Dawn wanted to read something longer and more “classic”, so I suggested this Tanizaki, which I read recently when I was flattened by a cold. I have to read it again because I was so involved in the story that I skimmed some of the later chapters because I wanted to see how it ended. It’s a deeply satisfying book about a once-prestigious family in pre-World War II Japan that is trying to marry off the beautiful third sister (I wanted to kick her in the head, she’s a dolt) while dealing with the headstrong youngest sister and her “modern” ideas. I kept thinking of Pride and Prejudice (the daughters, the almost casually-mentioned war) and Anna Karenina (All happy families…).

Bonus: The film adaptation by Kon Ichikawa

First page of The Makioka Sisters

Note: All the nominees are in English translation, except for this next one, by a Japanese-born Englishman.

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

A perfect novel, really. A deeply repressed man, the butler Stevens, goes on holiday, looks back on his life as a gentleman’s gentleman and considers that his revered employer might not be the great man he believes he is. Then he has a meeting with the woman he might have loved if he wasn’t so…aargh. Ishiguro is best at presenting you with a calm surface and then creeping up on you and unleashing an emotional tornado.

Bonus: the Merchant-Ivory movie with Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson

First page of The Remains of the Day

Flights by Olga Tocarczuk

Winner of this year’s International Man Booker Prize. I looked for it in Poland, where it was sold out everywhere, and finally asked Pat in Bangkok to get me a copy at Kinokuniya. There are copies at Fully Booked, I just saw them. Flights is not an easy book to summarize: it involves travel, an amputated limb, a cabinet of curiosities, the heart of Frederic Chopin and a mysterious disappearance. I don’t know what it is exactly, but it’s gorgeous.

First page of Flights

Young Once by Patrick Modiano

Modiano’s books are so thick with atmosphere that the minute I start reading, I am in Paris. I was going to suggest this to the group because it is short, but since we have over a month to read the assignment, we can do this later. In Young Once, a couple in their mid-30s look back on their shady past.

Bonus: Some of Modiano’s novels have been adapted for the screen, but not this one. Modiano himself co-wrote the screenplay for Louis Malle’s Lacombe, Lucien.

First page of Young Once

All Souls by Javier Marias

I am going to read this because we’re filming in Spain next year and I prepare for a trip by reading a novel set in the destination. This year, after several attempts, I finally finished a Marias novel (Thus Bad Begins)! Jose at Instituto recommends this one, about a Spanish visiting lecturer at Oxford, campus bitchery and gossip, schemes and affairs.

The winner chosen by the group: The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro.

See you in January!