BOOKLOVE: August 2014

Posted by bennardfajardo on September 29, 2014 · 5 Comments 

August has been a huge month for me particularly because the end of the month marked the day for the 2014 Library of Congress Book Festival where I got to meet one of my favorite authors, Paul Auster, and three other writers (well, two writers, Claire Messud and Siri Hustvedt, and one translator, Natasha Wimmer).  However, the books I got from the festival weren’t the only books that I bought last month. I have also been frequenting the thrift store near my mother’s workplace and I got these from the visits:

• Songbook by Nick Hornby – Hornby has always been at the peripheries of my interests. I have liked the cinematic adaptations of his works, Like a Boy and High Fidelity, the latter being a brilliant piece of film making in my opinion. However, I never really had a strong urge to read his works. However, I found a stray copy of High Fidelity here in the house and I actually quite liked the few pages that I’ve read from it. Anyway, I’m way of base now. In Songbook, Hornby writes about the songs that he loved. I found out I might like Hornby’s writing after all and I love music thus the book was purchased.
• The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks – I’m not really familiar with this book except that it’s listed by 25,000 readers as one of the top 100 novels of the 2oth century. It’s considered to be macabre and grotesque, two adjectives that intrigue me. Anyway, I bought it if for nothing else than it had my interest piqued.
• I Remember Nothing by Nora Ephron – Rhena had expressed interest in Ephron’s writing and she has actually read and liked Ephron’s more known essay collection, I Feel Bad About My Neck. Anyway, Ephron seems like a competent and interesting writer so why not?
• TransAtlantic by Colum McCann – I have been reading good reviews of McCann’s novel and was aware that it has been longlisted for the 2013 Man Booker Prize which eventually went to The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton. Anyway, yes, I am very interested in TransAtlantic’s story along with other works by Colum McCann like Let The Great World Spin and This Side of Brightness but I haven’t read him yet. I now add him to the growing list of writers whose works I have but I haven’t read yet.
• Enduring Love by Ian McEwan – It’s McEwan and, after reading Atonement, I need no other reason in buying his books. It’s written by McEwan, it’s in good condition, and it’s cheap. What else is there to think about?
• View With A Grain of Sand by Wislawa Szymborska – These are collected poems by Polish-born Nobel Laureate Wislawa Szymborska and her poems are just wonderful. There’s nothing to say about the book so let me just get an excerpt from ‘Nothing Twice’, one of her poems, and let it speak for itself:
  

  Why do we treat the fleeting day
  with so much needless fear and sorrow?
  It’s in its nature not to say
  Today is always gone tomorrow

  With smiles and kisses, we prefer
  to seek accord beneath our star,
  although we’re different (we concur)
  just as two drops of water are.

So there you go, my last book purchase for the summer season. Thanks for dropping by.

Filed under Book Love, Books · Tagged with Book Love, Books, Colum McCann, Enduring Love, I Remember Nothing, Iain Banks, Ian McEwan, Nick Hornby, Nora Ephron, Songbook, The Wasp Factory, TransAtlantic, View With A Grain of Sand, Wislawa Szymborska