10 Favorite Books

This is the second list I present in this blog, and hopefully more will follow in the coming weeks. As one can guess from the title this is a list of 10 favorite books, but not The List. I have read thousands of books over the years, some new, some old, and a few ancient, so one list would never do them justice. Below you will find books that I’ve read during the last few years, and which I’d place under the label of Modern Literature. Most probably I’ll compile another couple of lists under the same label, and also, at least, one consisting of classic titles. I know that some of my selections will look strange in your eyes, but every reader is different, and good fiction has many champions out there. Now, where shall I begin? Oh, this will do…

1.    Please Look After Mon by Kyung-sook Shin. I had this book on my eReader for a long time. I knew the story, I’ve read great reviews about it, but somehow I always chose something else over it. That was until that blessed day came when I started reading and everything changed, as I found myself in reader’s heaven. If you love stories with a heart, you’ll love this book. Read my review here.

 2.    The Secret Scripture and On Canaan’s Side by Sebastian Barry. I know that I’m cheating by placing two books by the same author in the list, but Barry is such a good writer that I don’t have too much of a choice. I remember that when I’ve first read The Secret Scripture I kept thinking, ‘No, I’m not a writer,’ since if I were to compare myself to Mr. Barry, well… You can see my review in Greek (yeah, I know, this sucks) for the latter here, while you can read about On Canaan’s Side in English right here.

 3.    Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto. This is the book that made me fall in love with Japanese Literature. It consists of two novellas, the eponymous Kitchen and Moonlight Shadow. Yoshimoto is one of those writers that can easily find their ways into a reader’s heart. All her books, with the exception of Amrita, are quite short, but while reading them you always find yourself traveling into another world; a world full of thoughts, emotions, dreams, and magic. I apologize again but I don’t have a review in English. You can find one in Greek here, while you can read what I had to say about her latest book The Lake, if you follow this link.

 4.    Ocean Sea and Silk by Alessandro Baricco. Here I go cheating again. I am so so sorry. No, I am not. The truth is that I couldn’t choose between these books. The first I’ve read 14 years ago while staying at the island of Karpathos in Greece, and it got stuck in my head ever since. The second I’ve only read a couple of years ago and it rekindled my interest in Baricco’s work. Here we have an Italian author that is a master of emotions and one of the best storytellers to walk the shores of his land in the last century or so.

 5.    A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin. A friend suggested Mr. Martin’s work to me a few years ago, and since I started reading him I never looked back. He is one of the finest storytellers of our times. His prose is beautiful and fluid, his action sequences are amazing, his plots are quite intriguing, while I also enjoy his sense of humor. I don’t think that many writers could produce a thick volume like A Feast for Crows, which is something like a link connecting two parts of the great story, and get away with it... in one piece. Anyway, if fantasy (and popular) fiction can be as good as this, then I say that I’m faithful fan of the genre(s).

 6.    Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha by Roddy Doyle. Well, it’s always good if someone laughs every now and then, and if you read this book you’ll laugh a lot. Roddy Doyle is a great author, who’s not always at his best, but Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha is considered by some as a modern classic and I totally agree with them. Perhaps I should add a book or two as companion reads, but there’s plenty of time to do that in the future.

 7.    Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami. I can’t explain why but this is my favorite Murakami novel. Everyone else is talking about Norwegian Wood or the Wind-Up Bird Chronicle but for me the author has reached the peak of his creativity with the book at hand. There’s no need to expand on it since you can read my review here.

 8.    No one belongs here more than you by Miranda July. Wow! What the fuck! Amazing! Yes, yes, yes! These are just a few of the expressions I’ve used while reading this great collection of short stories by the multitalented Miranda July. As I was going through her stories I felt as if she was talking directly to me, and I kept thinking that I should have been the author of most of them. As it seems Mrs. July lives in my head (and that’s not a good place to be; honestly).

9.    Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo. Pedro Páramo is one of those books that I call ballads; a novella that talks about people and their troubles, their everyday lives, their hopes and their fears, and about love. And much more. How much can you say in a few pages? Too much actually, if you know how to say it.Someone could call this book "experimental". Somebody else could say that it's "crazy." However, no one could possibly state that it is not an important one, since largely it is thanks to it that the magical realism of Latin America came to be.

10.    The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaňo. The late author was as good as they get. His knowledge was wide, his technique absolutely stunning, and his prose, at moments, simply breathtaking. The Savage Detectives is a book in love with books, but it’s also a journey, into the wilderness of a land and an era, into the joy and failures of youth, and into the abyss of the human soul. If you ever asked yourself, what is that special thing that makes literature great, all you have to do is read this novel and to get your answer.

Book Review: Please Look After Mom by Kyung-sook Shin

Please Look After Mom by Kyung-sook Shin is a masterpiece. Honestly I could sum up this review by using just these two words. If there was a book that made me feel lucky to be alive in order to read it, in 2011 was Sebastian Barry’s On Canaan’s Side. And after that came Please Look after Mom by Kyung-sook Shin – I mean chronologically, not quality wise, they are both superb. This is one of those books that are so full of grace that they take the reader’s breath away; not only for their plot, but mostly because of their prose; a prose that’s lyrical, dream-like, poetic, that sounds nostalgic and melancholic at the same time.

It all begins when an elderly woman called Park So-nyo vanishes into thin air while at the Seoul train station. She had just arrived there with her husband and they were supposed to board the Metro to visit one of their children. He made it onto the train, she didn’t, and by the time he realized she wasn’t there and went back to the station to find her, it was already too late, she had disappeared. What happened to her? Why did she do that to him? To them? Did she just get lost or…?

Well, there’s no one who can answer these questions, so the only thing we can do, is follow the story as told by an anonymous narrator. In its epicenter, as one would expect, is the woman and her husband, but two of their five children as well. They all felt guilty for what happened to her, and they were right to do so, since they’ve spent their entire lives taking her for granted, as an unmovable presence in their reality who would remain there forever.

It is through the memories of the two children that we get to know her better. And it is exactly through the same procedure that they, the son and the daughter, come to realize that that ordinary, illiterate woman had given them everything they ever needed, that in essence she sacrificed her life for their future/present happiness. It was for them that she went on living with a drunk, unfaithful and unworthy man, and it was for their sakes that she sold the only thing she ever owned. I have lived in darkness, without a spark of light, my entire life, she says. She was illiterate; that’s what she meant by the word darkness. That was her secret, the most important one, but not the only one.

As the story progresses and we get to know her better she surprises us all the more, since later rather than sooner we come to understand that Ordinary is not exactly the word one would use to describe this woman, unless he added an extra before. She was a strong woman, solid as a rock; a woman full of courage and with a big heart, who once didn’t hesitate to help a poor man who was trying to steal her children’s food. And she did that just because he was poorer than her. She had little but she knew how to count her blessings, and you can’t say that for a lot of people.

But her philanthropy, her humanity was not exhausted in that simple act. She used to feed some of the neighborhood’s kids as well, and use the free time she definitely didn’t have to help out in the everyday chores of an orphanage she helped built, or which rather she created out of thin air herself. No one seemed to have paid her any respect for that; no one; until now, that she’s just like a being who most likely once existed in a dream.

The author doesn’t only offer the reader an amazing story but she also manages to speak directly to his soul. Wake up, she seems to say to him, and take a good look at life and the people that surround you. Recognize who you are and to whom you owe that.

Park So-nyo’s story could be the story of every good mother. However Kyung-sook Shin’s book is unlike any other. It is so deeply humane, it sounds so utterly true, that does not only touch the soul but also helps it open its wings to the world out there and to the people; the real people; the most important ones. There’s some melancholy here but despite the subject matter it’s a sweet one; just like its heroine.

This is one of the best novels that I’ve read during the last decade or so; no wonder that it won the Man Asian Literary Prize. I do wonder though why it didn’t get the attention it deserves from the press in the west. Is it because Shin is not Murakami? Or is it simply because our western arrogance doesn’t allow us to recognize a gem when we see one? Well, at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is the book; this extraordinary work of art, which I would wholeheartedly recommend to everyone.