Books: Where'd You Go, Bernadette: A Novel by Maria Semple, 2013

A “delightful” reading and a “glittering” prose..The book invites such definitions and the irony of the quotation marks. It is really imaginative and fresh and very  often – quite funny. My problem with it is that its “charm” outweighs its author’s talent. I value more the “menace to society” aspect of the mother character than all the cuteness of the child. The book becomes too cute, especially towards the end.

The TED talk episode is hilarious, outstanding…

I could not get rid of the impression that I am reading a Young Adult novel. Is it because the YA mentality is gradually taking over the entire American literature?

Books: The Circle. A Novel by Dave Eggers, 2013

A nice dystopian novel which reads with pleasure. The style is crisp and light as in Zamyatin’s We and the balance between sarcastic humor and dark insights is just right. We follow an inspired young lady, Mae, into her spiraling path: literally – spiraling up in the ranks of her corporation driven by ambition and willingness to be perfect at work and do good in the world  and metaphorically – spiraling down into a state of brainwashed enthusiasm for “transparency”. The critique of the corporate culture of advanced high tech companies is scalding. The tensions between “secrets” and “morality” are examined bravely and honestly. Eggers describes a world permeated by a sense of creeping totalitarianism. 

Occasionally the book becomes repetitive but in a way this “circling” is necessary to build the ominous presence of “the Circle”…Gospodinov could be developed more as a character.

Otherwise, Very Good!

Books: The Blazing World, 2014. A Novel by Siri Hustvedt

The great idea to dig into the essence of modern art and the nature of taste (“What is taste?”) and what is left of art if it is dissociated from the celebrity, the persona of the artist — squandered.

Beckett’s Murphy was rejected by the publishers forty three times…Why not write exactly about that? “Without the aura of greatness, without the imprimatur of high culture, hipness or celebrity, what remained?” What is taste, again? This is the main point here but it was pushed aside by the author eager to make tired feminist arguments… The premise of the book is that a woman has to pass her artistic work as a man’s and only then watch it being appreciated – as “muscular, rigorous, cerebral”. How transparent, oversimplifying and pathetic in a way.

It is not enough to state that “it is not about sex”…A book built on intellectual argumentation has to take the debate further, no? The novel is inventorying endlessly the sins of man against woman through numerous literary references. “No one rejoices more in revenge than women, wrote Juvenal” — how misogynist! But haven’t we dealt with the past already? Everything is a symptom of misogyny. Ms. Hustvedt’s response to Juvenal is “And I say, I wonder why, boys. I wonder why.” And really – why.

The novel is built on several narratives commenting and undermining other narratives, a lot of silly role-playing, the use of “masks” upon “masks” upon “masks” and other similar postmodern crap. Most of the text involves pretentious commentary on classic authors from Kierkegaard to Zweig. The status of the book as “fiction” is quite shaky. Intellectually – it is a mess.

And a symptomatic self-revelation of Ms. Hustvedt’s is waiting for the reader on the book jacket: she is defined here by her “PhD in English from Columbia” and the fact of not mentioning in her bio that she is the wife of Paul Auster. If she was not a celebrity would I be reading her book? Sorry, it is really not about sex…

Books: Gone Girl. A Novel by Gillian Flynn, 2012

It is a smart, well written novel in the tradition of Patricia Highsmith. It is very hard to follow in her footsteps but Ms Flynn manages to do that pretty well. The novel follows a very complex structure and especially in the second half when the “trick” with Amy’s diary is revealed, walks on the razor’s edge trying to balance logic and conflicting psychological motivations. Often it seems the author is almost about to trip switching between the narratives of He and She but eventually manages to pull it off neatly, collect all loose ends and turn it all into one huge metaphor of male-female love-hate stand-off and psychological warfare. “One situation – maybe one alone – could drive me to murder: family life, togetherness” Patricia Highsmith is quoted to have said…Ms Flynn’s novel is an intricate illustration of that statement with a little bit of Porfiry Petrovich thrown in — his role being played by a female local cop…The language is witty with that type of wittiness that misleadingly steers the reader into “chick-lit” territory only to make them realize later that this genre affiliation is severely ironically undermined.

Film: Nebraska. Director Alexander Payne, 2013

A little bit of a disappointment delivered by a favorite director… This is not “About Schmidt”…far from it. It lacks the drama, the surprise, the painful realization of a wasted life catching up shockingly with an unsuspecting Schmidt. In “Nebraska” the main character is too senile, too confused to be able to experience or sustain a drama. Actually, we don’t know if he is capable of experiencing anything. Impossible to identify with him. All the characters are predictable cliches. The black and white vision seems like a whim – carries no meaning. It oddly reminds of a Bogdanovich film without a Bogdanovich message…Bob Nelson’s script does not rise above the anecdotal. Overall – it seems like Payne took the path of least resistance and tried to do tell a story that he already knows how to tell.

Books: Paris: The Novel. Edward Rutherfurd, 2013

Could not finish this book by internationally best selling author of historical fiction Edward Rutherfurd.

It is a combination of a Paris tour guide and a soap opera intertwined with French history on high-school level. 
Think about the vast audience out there that actually reads Rutherfurd – readers endowed with intellectual naivete and literary innocence…

Books: My Struggle – Part 1. A Man in Love – Part 2. A Novel by Karl Ove Knausgaard, 2012, 2013

I resisted liking My Struggle. It won me over slowly after I had finished the first half of the book and at the end of it I was convinced that it is one of the best books I have come across recently. The ending of the first part of My Struggle (the events following the death of Karl Ove’s father) is an example of some truly great writing without even trying to be one. This is actually the secret of the book – it is great literature pretending to be a documentary account of simple everyday events. The book has some of the magnificent qualities of  Scandinavian literature – the somber tone, the harrowing honesty to oneself to the point of self-flagellation and to the point of cruelty when it concerns the others, the fearless embrace of life. It is written in the great tradition of Ibsen, Strindberg and Bergman…And of course, it owes a lot to Proust but in a sense, it is also quite anti-Proustian. This book deals with the nature of memory but not in the narcissistic way that can be so boring in Proust. It dwells on the minutiae of life with a sense of desperation – the desperation that life has no essence, that there is nothing beyond the string of fleeting moments which can never be satisfactory because one is always speeding towards the next moment dreaming that it would be more complete. The sense that the present cannot be truly experienced because one always is in want of something else. 
I have never been so conscious of the oppression of small talk and socializing as after reading Knausgaard. His account of a child’s birthday party is more valuable than a book with dozens of fictional characters vainly searching for happiness. His descriptions of a drive home after a failed attempt at vacationing with his family, or a Christmas party with friends, or trying to return a soup in a restaurant, or just smoking outside his apartment building and observing the kids’ play, etc. etc. — are more insightful than hundreds of pages of many (critically acclaimed) novels.
Sometimes, the emotions conveyed are so true, so close to reality, that because of that lack of fictional distance between the narrator and the reader, one just wants to close the book and cry.
I don’t want fiction, I want to read Knausgaard.

                                                                                                                             “Too much desire, too little hope“
                                                                                                                                                                           Knausgaard

Media: Boycott Upworthy and Buzzfeed!

Really! I am appealing to people for whom news media mean something as a source of information, analysis or opinion, and just good reading.

Boycott these sites and their intrusive postings and sharings on Facebook. Boycott any headline that is imitating their so called “viral” style. Don’t click on any headline that contains a list like “5 things” or “45 tips,” etc. etc. or headlines that start with “watch,” “see,” “this girl (did xyz)” and the like… Don’t click on a headline that suggests what your reaction to reading the article should be! Don’t be underestimated! Don’t allow to be manipulated. Don’t be fooled – once or twice –you’ll always be the stupid one and shame will be on you and you only. What will you learn if you click on “Humans Aren’t Stupid, We Just Happen To Be Acting Very Stupidly”? (Upworthy) Does this headline even make any sense? Curiosity is a great driver of human progress. It urged man to look up at the stars and seek answers about the universe. But the type of curiosity that makes you click on Buzzfeed’s headlines is the same as the one that makes you look into your neighbors’ window. And, no, you are not going to solve any crime (“Rear Window”). Peeping is a titillating form of entertainment. Can you refrain from it? There are better sources of entertainment – just think about it!

Books: Flour Water Salt Yeast. Ken Forkish

My friend Sibylla gave me the perfect gift — a cookbook about baking artisan bread. It turned out to be much more than a collection of recipes. It’s an ode to bread! After Garlic and Sapphires this is the first cookbook that I read with such pleasure. Mr. Forkish renders the thrills of baking bread vividly and with love –the tactile nature of the work, the magic of the rising dough, the smell of the levain, the simple elegance of the cinnamon-brown pain de campagne and the fantastic aroma of freshly-baked bread in the morning…

Have you ever thought of what a bread-tasting event would be like? Mr. Forkish offers this experience in his bakery.

The book also perpetuates the glory of the life-style change myth – a man’s dream of leaving everything behind and becoming a baker, or a wine-maker, or a restaurateur, or whatever… The author was adventurous enough to make that leap of faith himself. After 20 years in the IT business he started his own bakery in Portland. A very successful one at that!

Ah, the romance of waking up at 4 AM to bake bread….

Sibylla Chavdar’s perfect hand-made bread photographed by her.