Good old stuff: Stuart Kaminsky

Hello!

Where are my holds?  the public library is still closed and I am STILL relying on borrowing from friends, little libraries and digital collections, all of which have limitations BUT ALSO some benefits.

Last week my friend Sharlene gave me  Black Knight in Red Square written in 1984 by Stuart Kaminsky, author of 50 books who died in 2009. The book is worn, frayed, with yellowing pages, but what a fabulous read.

Kaminsky's character Rostnikov works as a detective in the Soviet Union where he has to solve murders while dealing with a suffocating paranoid bureaucracy that has the power and inclination to send him to the Gulag or worse should he displease his masters. Add this to your work-related stress!

The murder itself is clever and interesting, but it's not the main charm of this read. Kaminsky adds humourous touches, such as when an experimental filmmaker from the west shows an incomprehensible movie at a Moscow film festival. Only the elderly mother of one of the detectives finds it "not too bad." The filmmaker, of course, attributes the audience's hostility to being Russian.

Kaminsky's Rosnikov series isn't that easy to find, so I was terribly pleased that Sharlene has found a stack of them to give me.

Onward!  today I may scavenge through more little libraries on my daily walk, the purpose of which is to improve my state of mind. I encourage all little library owners to please add some good books and recycle the junk.

Borrowing books from friends: A Trip to the Stars

Hello!

The public library is closed, you're tired of digital books, you've finished scavenging from the little libraries all around you, and you need something to read. If you rarely purchase from bookstores, it is time to ask your friends to loan you something from their shelves. If your friends read a lot, and do spend money in bookstores, this will be a good option.

Many years working in public libraries have made me aware that people have odd relationships to their books. The books may be worn out, of no interest, outdated, the pages yellow, and taking up space, not to mention very heavy if you need to move, yet they hang onto them. Therefore, your friends' shelves may contain old treasures that you haven't seen for years.

Fortunately, the latest book I borrowed was a great read. Published in 2000, A Trip to the Stars by Nicholas Christopher was a long complex novel with lots of imagery, yet plot-driven and full of fascinating details about stars, spiders, the lost City of Atlanta, and many other unusual topics.

The beginning of the book is terrific. A recently orphaned ten year old boy is taken to a planetarium by his young aunt, now his guardian. On the way out, he looks up to find himself with a completely different woman, who kidnaps him and catapults both him and his aunt into new lives.

The book is rich in characters as Alma and Loren become Mala and Enzo, embarking on separate adventures before they meet again  25 years later. A major theme of the novel is loss of both objects and people and the characters criss-cross the planet as they attempt to regain what is lost.

I recommend this title as an immersive and constantly interesting fictional world.

Collecting Silence by Ulrike Narwani

Hello:

Ulrike Narwani's beautifully designed book Collecting Silence, with its pale green-blue cover and  floating white flowers, leads us to experience a sensual and vivid poetic world. Her poem"Netsuke" defined as "Miniature sculptures....highly prized as exquisite art objects" can stand as an image for the precise and exquisite details of landscape and location that plunge the reader into a world of sight, sound and smell:

"Newcomers" such a clear picture of this place.

Sun pugnacious

Stray dogs, plastic bags,
faint smell of dahl and rice,
car exhaust, heat, honking.

"Anniversary" provides a close natural observation of a common animal that resonates with the pleasure of celebrating a 40 year anniversary. The stuff of the natural world integrates seamlessly with the joyful experience of a long relationship.

A squirrel
grey as a weathered fence
tail, flicks of butternut gold
grasps in its paws a dried corn cob
rushes off.


As well as her precise and concrete descriptions, Ulrike skillfully presents unusual word patterns and observations.

from "Frolic":  I pick up a stone and throw it as far as I can. It turns bird,
many birds with bright wings. I ride their song.

The reader can see a flock of birds arising from a tree in response to a thrown stone.

Her natural imagery leads to a dark undertone:

from "Curriculum Vitae"
I float my broken things down a river in a canoe
made of salted wounds.

We are in a beautiful natural world, that can present us with wonders or terrors.

I am thankful for....
the rising sun
for air
shared
as if that could save us.

from "Good Things."


Narwani offers  new ways of seeing familiar plants, animals and natural features like squirrels and trees; new ways of linking our relationships and experiences to the precisely observed concrete world and deeply felt considerations of the human situation that is at times both joyful and tragic; altogether a rich harvest of pleasure and insight.

Little libraries to the rescue: John Le Carre

Hello:

The public library is closed, and I have been scavenging from little libraries, easily found on my many walks around the city. Frequently filled with terrible junk that should be recycled, I have found some jewels among the trash. Recently, from Vic West,  I scored an old yellowed book written in 1965, which was John Le Carre's The Looking Glass War,  the second title in the author's series about George Smiley and the cold war.

I was really amazed. "Wow," I thought, "this guy can really write." Structured in three sections, Taylor's Run, Avery's Run and Leiser's Run, Le Carre presents a world of nearly complete incompetence, in which the departments in charge of security and spying, send hapless human beings on impossible errands, often to their deaths.

Le Carre's vivid descriptions present a world in which it is always raining, always cold, you always fall in the mud, you never feel good, your perceptions about impending disaster are always ignored by those in charge who try to wrap you in cocoons of illusion. You are always betrayed. 

The buildings around you are shabby, corrupt, old, inadequate, the beds are hard, the food is inedible, the liquor flows. Everyone is always drinking, to their detriment. Love doesn't help, the women are desperate or nasty, or helpless to intervene in a fool's errand.

All of this is very enjoyable to read about because Le Carre is a master storyteller, terribly good at creating a world filled with real people in appalling situations about to enter their undoing. I highly recommend the diversions of Le Carre's spy series.