bookish

the silly adjective above could describe myself but in this case it does not.

i’ve just recently (okay almost a week ago) finished two books that i started A LONG TIME AGO. i tend to start books, get distracted or tired, and then forget about them.

(goodbye)tsugumi by banana yoshimoto and the bastard of istanbul by elif shafak. both are tremendous novels, quite different but i liked each of them equally as much.

tsugumi is a summer story chronicling the lives of the protagonist and tsugumi herself. there’s not a clear plot but still yoshimoto is aptly able to convey her characters emotions. i hate to use the cliché  but ‘coming of age’ is quite appropriate here. the girls, in their late teens, deal with familiar emotions of love and saying goodbye; saying goodbye to the familiar  and trying to recall, when all is said and done, the precious memories of the past.

the style in the bastard of istanbul is much different from the previously mentioned novel. while tsugumi is simple, lean, and plain bastard is a much longer novel with almost every single character being intertwined in some way with one another. here, everyone is connected by a single thing/event revealed in the last pages of the story. bastard is rich with detail and a quite humorous look at a complex (family) history. the novel’s tone is rather light and airy making the, at times, serious subject matter much easier to digest.

beware, if you like serious, depressing, or melodramatic novels, the above titles may not be for you.

i’m currently struggling through anthony swofford’s exit a which seems to me a more action based novel rather than an emotion based one. however, i have not gotten through more than a few chapters. anthony swofford wrote the non-fiction work jarhead of which i have no intention of ever reading.

i don’t like non-fiction. for me i love when a story can take you to a far way place without having to try. non-fiction is too real.

have you ever had a day or two where all you felt like doing was reading pretty much every book in sight? i love that feeling.

~ by juliamie on June 16, 2007.