By imagining many possible worlds, argues novelist and psychologist Keith Oatley, fiction helps us understand ourselves and others. "For more than two thousand years people have insisted that reading fiction is good for you. Aristotle claimed that poetry—he meant the epics of Homer and the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, which we would now …
Author: suroor alikhan
I have always been an avid reader. I read across genres and try and find books by writers from countries around the world. One of the things I love is talking to fellow readers about books!
The File on H: Ismail Kadare
Translated from Jusuf Vrioni's French translation by David Bellos.Published by Arcade Publishing, 1998, 192 pages. Original version in Albanian published in 1981. Two naïve Irish-American scholars travel to Albania in the early 1930s in search of the origins of epic poetry—in particular, of Homer’s epics. And the only place where oral epic poetry still exists …
The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter: Malcolm Mackay
Published by Mantle / Pan, 2013, 256 pages. A gangster book with a difference. We follow a professional hitman, Calum MacLean, as he figures out how he is going to kill Lewis Winter, a smalltime drug dealer who has become a thorn in the side of a powerful criminal gang. The book is set in …
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I am Malala—The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and was Shot by the Taliban: Malala Yousafzai
Review by Lesley O’Dowd National news in countries around the world showed 16 year old Malala addressing the United Nations in July 2013. Viewers heard her eloquent plea for the right to an education. Since recommencing in England the education interrupted by the near-fatal Taliban bullet in her head, Malala has produced an autobiography, co-authored …
Le Sermon sur la chute de Rome: Jérôme Ferrari
Review by Lesley O’Dowd Published by Actes Sud, 2013, 208 pages. Over-intellectual, abstract… I sighed when I heard the Prix Goncourt 2012 had gone to a novel about student philosophers who decide to run a bar in Corsica--and that the bar will meet the fate of Rome falling to the barbarians in 430, as commented …
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Neil Gaiman: Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming
Neil Gaiman's impassioned talk on the importance of reading and daydreaming as a gateway to our imaginations. I feel I could have written this (though not quite so eloquently) in the sense that I agree with pretty much everything he says. I'm sure a lot of you do too. He says that he attended a talk …
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The Book of Chameleons: Jose Eduardo Agualusa
Translated from Portuguese by Daniel Hahn Published by Simon & Schuster, 2008, 180 pages. “Truth has a habit of being ambiguous... If it were exact, it wouldn’t be human.” This is my first book of the reading challenge and what a wonderful way to begin! A whimsical, lyrical story about truth and memory. The book …
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The 2014 Reading Challenge
The challenge for 2014 is to widen our reading horizons. To do this, we're forming a group of readers who will, between us, attempt to read a book from nearly every country in the world. The list of countries with suggested/potential authors has been created as a Google doc. The link will be emailed to …
Best books of 2013
I know I've already asked for this via Facebook, but we have more space here and not everyone is on FB. Respond in a post rather than in a comment on my piece. Mine are: Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail—Cheryl Strayed; Snake Ropes—ess Richards; Thirteen Moons by Charles Frazier; The Imperfectionists—Tom Rachman; …
Life after Life: Kate Atkinson
Published by Bond Street Books / Penguin, 2013, 624 pages. This book seems to have made it to pretty much every list of the best books of 2013. The premise is interesting: if you could live your life over and over again until you got it right, would you actually get it right? The main …
Talking About Books 