L... Li... Lit corner!

So much trepidation. Is it really - could it be a lit corner? Yes, it is and it can!

I mentioned last post that a lit corner would be coming up soon... but then soon never happened. Most unfortunate. A forewarning: this Lit Corner is heavily sponsored by the French Language.

Another thing, before I get to cornering proper: I said that I had finished three books since the last post. However, looking back on it I have read far more books since the last Lit Corner. These books will not be making an appearance here, although my thoughts on most of them are to be found on goodreads.com. Also in Category: Books that Will Not be Appearing Here are all of the books I mentioned in my last post. In fact, only one book of the following has ever seen the light of this blog before!

So, with all that said...

The first book I finished was Stardust by Neil Gaiman. Okay, so perhaps this one has made it here before? Who can be sure?* At any rate, it had been sitting on my bookshelf for three years. The reason why it stayed there for so long is because I loved the film so much and then when it came to reading the book... well, I just couldn't get behind it. This year, however, I said that enough was really enough, it was a crying shame to leave this book lying around when it was really short and something I would probably enjoy and which probably wouldn't even take me that much time to get through. Okay, I didn't say all of that. So, I buckled down and read it. Aaaaand... eh. Well, eh. I gave it four stars on goodreads, but it hindsight I might say that was a little bit generous. But I wanted to be fair to the book. I was, and still am, aware of the fact that my view of the book was very much coloured by the film. Or rather, it might be more accurate to say that my view of the film drained colour from the book, because there were certain things not present in the book that were there in the film. In fact, one of my favourite scenes was very conspicuously not present - although I understand that it would have been very different from book to film.

All of that being said, I would like to say that there were things in the book that I absolutely loved. Tristan doesn't start off a lovable scamp, as he does in the film, but I do like finding out about his family about background. Likewise, I like that we see more about the town of Wall and its inhabitants, and about Faerie, also. But, this leads to more niggling annoyances. Perhaps there is an author's preferred version out there somewhere that resolves these things. I like to imagine that there is. But it feels like Gaiman rushed the end of the book, so the things that could have given more depth and more colour were skated over. We don't see the moment where Tristan and Yvaine fall in love, as we do in the film. We don't see their lives together. We don't see anything of some kind of conspiracy theory which is brought up without warning or explanation. We just see 'and then the did a bunch of exciting things that you will never hear about and then they ruled for a little while and that's about that.' Which, really, is somewhat lacking. So, altogether, I wasn't nearly as enchanted with this book as I would have liked, and I probably would stick to recommending the film if, by some mysterious chance, someone has not yet heard of either.

The second book I finished was Arsène Lupin: Gentleman-Cambrioleur. This book was of the kind that can rightfully be called 'a riotous romp' and a 'bundle of fun'. It had an episodic format, and one chapter wouldn't really need to be read to understand the next. This makes perfect sense, as it was designed to be a French answer and counterpoint to the Sherlock Holmes stories. Arsène, like Sherlock, is a genius whose exploits are documented by a trusted third party. Arsène, unlike Sherlock, plays a large role in this documentation: he recounts the stories, and often even provides articles of his more laudable exploits to a newspaper. This book was a fun read, but nothing of any real depth. It was therefore easy to dip in and out of. I doubt I'll be reading any of the following stories any time soon, but I was fond of Arsène and would recommend this father of the Gentleman-Thief.

Finally, I finished Nagasaki, by Éric Faye. Really, I ought to have finished it long before I did, but then I put it down and then it got lost, and then other books trumped it in importance... but I refound it and got to business. I am sad to say that I am not quite as enamoured of the book as I first hoped. The story was fascinating, the language and the telling was beautiful... but something about occupying the point of view of Shimura, one of the two main first person narrators, made me very uncomfortable. I imagine that this was an intended effect - both narrators were alienated, and the narrator of the first part of the book appeared to preoccupied with his solitary lifestyle, the fact that he was single, the thought of what his life would have been were he not... these thoughts are central to the story, I think, but nonetheless made me feel one more than one occasion that I would rather not see them.

At first, I compared this book to something Julio Cortazar but it became more Henry James à la Turn of the Screw and finally something of it's own. Éric Faye really does use the French language in a lovely way, and I am looking forward to more.

So concludes the Lit Corner. I would like to promise another one soon, but that does not seem to be likely. My to-read list is a long as ever, and priorities have shifted so that a book which wasn't originally on it has moved up into first place. Another, similarly unknown book has weasled its way into regular reading, while my reread of Låt den rätta komma in, the Swedish original of John Ajvide Lindqvist's Let the Right One In has taken up so much spare time that even Kaninhjärta has had to take a backseat. Speaking of that latter, however, we have finally gotten to the bit which will take us to the bit where we can some action! Glory be, it's only taken thirty pages...**

So, good luck and godspeed to me, and
Happy Reading to you!
Little Newman

*Google, that's who. Also, me, because I think I talked about it on the day that I bought it, book haul style. Except for the fact that, back then, I didn't know what a book haul was.
**Okay, I still really enjoy this book, and it was good getting to know Anne and Mary in so much depth, and there was foreshadowing and setting up to be done... but after a while, being told 'this will have dire consequences' and 'if only they knew what would happen next' gets irritating and you just want to skip to the dire consequences...
Well. Rant over.