Freitag, Februar 29, 2008

Literarische Spaziergänge durch Wien

sind mein nächstes Thema und ich freue mich schon sehr drauf. Mein voriges Buch "A Spy in the House of Love" war nicht schlecht, aber wirklich begeistert hat es mich. Ich habe von Anais Nin schon besseres gelesen. Deshalb freue ích mich schon sehr auf mein neues Buch, denn da geht es um mein Lieblingsthema Literatur/Bücher/Lesen und auch noch um Wien.


Roman DAVID-FREIHSL
Christian FISCHER
Rückkehr zur Strudlhofstiege
Literarische Spaziergänge durch Wien

Kurzbeschreibung: Ein Buch für Leseratten und Wien-Besucher. Schauplätze großer Literatur mit Wiener Flair. Ein Journalist und ein Fotograf begeben sich auf Spurensuche: Wie sieht es heute an jenen Orten aus, die einst Schauplatz eines Romans waren? Wo immer sie hinkommen, finden sie etwas, das wie ein Echo aus dem dazugehörigen Roman in die Jetztzeit schwingt. In der Gasse, in der Robert Menasse in „Selige Zeiten, brüchige Welt“ einen VW gegen einen Baum setzt, kugeln tatsächlich zerbeulte Teile ebenjener Automarke herum. Und wo Robert Musils „Mann ohne Eigenschaften“ mit einem wahren Hasenfuß von Kutscher unterwegs war, treffen sie einen Fiaker, der bekennt, ein „Nervenbündel“ zu sein. Die Leser dieses Buches haben das Vergnügen, Literatur in Text und Bild neu zu erleben, treffen alte Bekannte und bekommen Lust auf bisher vielleicht noch nicht Gelesenes. Darüber hinaus eignet es sich auch als Stadtführer für Wien-Besucher, die die Stadt auf den Spuren großer Literatur erkunden möchten.

Dienstag, Februar 26, 2008

Noch ein dünnes Buch

Das Buch vom Esterhazykeller war sehr informativ, aber leider gleich ausgelesen. Es gab einen kurzen geschichtlichen Abriß über die Familie Esterhazy, über das Palais Esterhazy, den Keller als Gastwirtschaft und auch über Joseph Haydn. Dazu kamen viele - oft auch ganzseitige - Bilder.

Heute werde ich dann mit einem ganz anderen Thema beginnen:



Anais NIN
A Spy in the House of Love

Synopsis: Beautiful, bored and bourgeoise, Sabina leads a double life inspired by her relentless desire for brief encounters with near-strangers. Fired into faithlessness by a desperate longing for sexual fulfilment, she weaves a sensual web of deceit across New York. But when the secrecy of her affairs becomes too much to bear, Sabina makes a late night phone-call to a stranger from a bar, and begins a confession that captivates the unknown man and soon inspires him to seek her out.

Montag, Februar 25, 2008

Weiterhin in Wien

nach dem Josef Roth, der mir sehr gut gefallen hat, bleibe ich lesetechnisch in Wien und habe mir dafür ein Buch mit nur 95 Seiten und vielen Fotos ausgesucht.

Gerhard KLETTER
Der Esterhazykeller in Wien

Inhalt: Fast 2000 Jahre dienten etagentiefe Keller unter den Häusern von Wien als Vorratslager. Viele wurden zu Weinschenken, in Wien liebevoll Stadtheurige genannt. Immer wieder boten diese Keller Schutz in Notzeiten. Die ersten Christen verbargen sich in den so genannten Katakomben. Während der Türkenbelagerung suchten die Bürger Schutz vor Kanonenkugeln und im Zweiten Weltkrieg vor den ungeheuren Zerstörungskräften der Bomben.
Die kaisertreue ungarische Familie Esterházy half im Jahre 1683 tatkräftig mit, die türkische Belagerung abzuwehren. Sie schenkte allen Verteidigern der Stadt in ihrem Keller kostenlos Wein aus, um die Abwehrkraft zu stärken.
Dieser reich bebilderte Band schlägt einen Bogen von den Anfängen des "Esterházykellers" bis in die heutigen Tage. Rund 100 bislang meist unveröffentlichte Fotografien aus dem Archiv der Familie Esterházy dokumentieren die beeindruckende Geschichte des weltberühmten Weinkellers und der Fürstenfamilie.
Univ. Prof. Dr. Gerhard Kletter hat bereits mehrere historische Bücher über Wien und seine Institutionen veröffentlicht und ist vielen Lesern bereits durch seine Veröffentlichung "Der Friedhof St. Marx" bekannt, die ebenfalls im Sutton Verlag erschienen ist. Mit diesem Buch präsentiert er einen spannenden Rückblick auf die Geschichte des nach wie vor beliebten "Esterházykellers" in Wien.

Samstag, Februar 23, 2008

Noch ein Roth

diesesmal aber der Österreicher Joseph Roth, den ich heute abend zu lesen beginne. Mit nur etwas mehr als 130 Seiten sollte ich ihn morgen dann ausgelesen haben.



Josepf ROTH

Zipper and his Father


Synopsis: Set in Vienna in the early part of the twentieth century, Zipper and his Father is a compelling and wonderfully atmospheric portrayal of a childhood friend, Arnold Zipper, and his father, as seen through the eyes of a young boy.

The Zipper family welcome the arrival of their son's friend and the boy is fascinated by their cosy suburban life. Zipper Senior, a violin-maker and travelling salesman, is determined that they will attain the success that was denied to him. However, as the two friends mature their lives take different paths' - the army, university, early career choices and a disastrous marriage to an aspiring actress all take their toll - and each has a very different story to tell.

From the outskirts of Vienna to the Hollywood hills, Zipper and his Father charts the ambitions of a whole generation who, during period of erratic social change, found themselves dreaming of what might have been.

Dienstag, Februar 19, 2008

Japan

ist mein nächstes literarisches Reiseziel. Nach dem hervorragenden Paul Auster beginne ich heute Nachmittag mit dem folgenden Buch.






Kazuo Ishiguro
An Artist of the Floating World

Synopsis: It is 1948. Japan is rebuilding her cities after the calamity of World War II, her people putting defeat behind them and looking to the future. The celebrated painter, Masuji Ono, fills his days attending to his garden, his house repairs, his two grown daughters and his grandson; his evenings drinking with old associates in quiet lanternlit bars. His should be a tranquil retirement. But as his memories continually return to the past - to a life and carreer deeply touched by the rise of Japanese militarism - a dark shadow begins to grow over his serenity.

Sonntag, Februar 17, 2008

Geschafft!

Mit Coetzee fürchte ich, werde ich nicht warm. Seine Essays haben mir auch vom Stil her gefallen, seine Romane langweilen mich nur. Ich kann mich in die handelnden Personen nicht einfühlen und die Zeitgeschehenisse in YOUTH wurden höchstens in einem oder zwei Sätzen so nebenher abgehandelt. Noch eine Chance wird er vermutlich nicht bekommen - auch wenn er den Literaturnobelpreis gewonnen hat und zweifacher Booker-Prize-Gewinner ist.

Deshalb beginne ich heute mit einem dünnen Buch eines meiner Lieblingsautoren.

Paul AUSTER
The Red Notebook

"The Red Notebook bears testimony to Auster's sense of the metaphysical elegance of life and art." Literary Review

In this acrobatic and virtuosic collection, Paul Auster traces the compulsion to make literature. In a selection of interviews, als well as in the collection's title essay, Auster reflects upon his own work, on the need to break down the boundary between living and writing, and on the use of certain genre conventions to penetrate matters of memory and identity.

The Red Notebook both undermines and illuminates our accepted notions about literature, and guides us towards a finer understanding of the dangerous stakes of writing. It also includes Auster's impassioned essay "A Prayer for Salman Rushdie", as well as a set of striking and bittersweet reminiscences collected under the apposite title, "Why Write?"

"An elegant collection of observations and autobiographical fragments." Observer

Mittwoch, Februar 13, 2008

Weiter geht's

mit meinen "dünnen" Büchern. Diesesmal führt das Buch nach Südafrika und London. Hoffentlich ist es genau so gut wie der Moore und der Hornby. Der letzte Coetzee hat mir ja weniger gefallen - aber jeder Autor bekommt eine 2. Chance. Die meisten Schriftsteller jedenfalls...






J. M. Coetzee
Youth

Book Description: The narrator of Youth, a student in the South Africa of the 1950s, has long been plotting an escape from his native country: from the stifling love of his mother, from a father whose failures haunt him, and from what he is sure is impending revolution. Studying mathematics, reading poetry, saving money, he tries to ensure that when he arrives in the real world, wherever that may be, he will be prepared to experience life to its full intensity, and transform it into art. Arriving at last in London, however, he finds neither poetry nor romance. Instead he succumbs to the monotony of life as a computer programmer, from which random, loveless affairs offer no relief. Devoid of inspiration, he stops writing. An awkward colonial, a constitutional outsider, he begins a dark pilgrimage in which he is continually tested and continually found wanting.Set against the background of the 1960s – Sharpeville, the Cuban missile crisis, Vietnam – Youth is a remarkable portrait of a consciousness, isolated and adrift, turning in on itself. J.M. Coetzee explores a young man's struggle to find his way in the world with tenderness and a fierce clarity.

Sonntag, Februar 10, 2008

Von der Karibik

geht es nun nach Nord-London. Das Buch, das ich heute Abend beginnen werde, spielt in London und passt zu meinem "Dünne-Bücher-Projekt". Es hat nur knappe 260 Seiten.




Nick HORNBY
A Long Way Down

Synopsis: Narrated in turns by a dowdy, middle-aged woman, a half-crazed adolescent, a disgraced breakfast TV presenter and an American rock star cum pizza delivery boy, A Long Way Down is the story of the Toppers House Four, aka Maureen, Jess, Martin and JJ. A low-rent crowd with absolutely nothing in common - save where they end up that New Year's Eve night. And what they do next, of course. Funny, sad, and wonderfully humane, Nick Hornby's new novel asks some of the big questions: about life and death, strangers and friendship, love and pain, and whether a slice of pizza can really see you through a long, dark night of the soul.

Freitag, Februar 08, 2008

Neues Buch

Wieder habe ich ein Buch ausgelesen und wieder mußte ich mich jetzt - nach dem Nach-Hause-Kommen für ein neues Buch entscheiden. Ausgewählt habe ich mir wieder ein relativ dünnes Buch von einem Schriftsteller, den ich auch sehr mag.

Brian MOORE

Es gibt kein anderes Leben

Kurzbeschreibung: Können ungerechte, politische Verhältnisse, Elend und Korruption nur mit Gewalt beseitigt werden? Für den Armenpriester Jeannot, Präsident einer Karibikinsel, die in vielem an Haiti erinnert, ist dies angesichts der Not seines Landes keine Frage. Seinen geistigen Ziehvater, Père Paul Michel, stürzt diese Frage hingegen in eine Glaubenskrise. Brian Moore erzählt das Drama von Moral und Macht, dem sich jeder stellen muß, der seinen Glauben an eine bessere Welt nicht aufgeben will.

"Nicht nur Brian Moores bisher bestes Buch, sondern einer der besten politischen Romane, die in den letzten Jahren geschrieben wurde." Boston Sunday Globe

Mittwoch, Februar 06, 2008

Der Februar

ist ein kurzes Monat und deshalb habe ich ihn zum Monat der dünnen Bücher erkoren. Auch das Buch, das ich heute Abend beginnen werde, hat nur knappe 170 Seiten - und daher wird es wohl auch in zwei oder drei Tagen ausgelesen sein.







Jeanette Winterson

Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit

Amazon.co.uk Review: Jeanette, the protagonist of Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit and the author's namesake, has issues--"unnatural" ones: her adopted mam thinks she's the Chosen one from God; she's beginning to fancy girls; and an orange demon keeps popping into her psyche. Already Jeanette Winterson's semi-autobiographical first novel is not your typical coming-of-age tale.
Brought up in a working-class Pentecostal family, up North, Jeanette follows the path her Mam has set for her. This involves Bible quizzes, a stint as a tambourine-playing Sally Army officer and a future as a missionary in Africa, or some other "heathen state". When Jeanette starts going to school ("The Breeding Ground") and confides in her mother about her feelings for another girl ("Unnatural Passions"), she's swept up in a feverish frenzy for her tainted soul. Confused, angry and alone, Jeanette strikes out on her own path, that involves a funeral parlour and an ice-cream van. Mixed in with the so-called reality of Jeanette's existence growing up are unconventional fairy tales that transcend the everyday world, subverting the traditional preconceptions of the damsel in distress.
In Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Winterson knits a complicated picture of teenage angst through a series of layered narratives, incorporating and subverting fairytales and myths, to present a coherent whole, within which her stories can stand independently. Imaginative and mischievous, she is a born storyteller, teasing and taunting the reader to reconsider their worldview.

Montag, Februar 04, 2008

Noch ein dünnes

Buch, das unter 200 Seiten hat werde ich heute Abend beginnen. Das Katzenbuch war ein sehr netter und informativer Ratgeber, mit vielen lustigen Zeichnungen. Heute kommt aber wieder einmal einer meiner Lieblingsautoren dran, natürlich im englischen Original:




Philip ROTH

Everyman

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.comPhilip Roth's 27th novel is a marvel of brevity, admirable for its elegant style and composition (no surprise), but remarkable above all for its audacity and ambition. It seizes unflinchingly on one of the least agreeable subjects in the domain of the novel -- the natural deterioration of the body. But beyond that, Everyman can be seen as a bid to engage conclusively with the core anxieties that the literary novel exists to confront: How, absent the shadow of God, in new and confusing brightness, shall we decide what we are, how we human animals should judge ourselves and whether we can love our species despite everything?
Everyman begins with its hero's end, his interment. Only three of the graveside mourners speak -- the dead man's daughter, his second wife and his older brother. Ordinary puzzlement, sadness and resignation are expressed: "That was the end. No special point had been made." What follows is a summary retrospective of the protagonist's life. We see him as a dutiful good son who, yielding to his parents' wishes, sets aside his artistic aspirations and, after a tour of duty in the Navy, goes to work in advertising. He prospers, ultimately becoming creative director of a major New York-based firm. His infidelities figure in the breakups of at least two of his three marriages. Along the way, he fathers two sons (they reject him with bitterness for having left their mother) and a hapless daughter, who adores him.
His health abruptly worsens when he is in his early fifties and he has to live through 20 years of episodic but severe medical interventions: many surgeries, including a quintuple bypass. His medical miseries dominate his life. He retreats to an upscale retirement community on the Jersey shore and devotes himself to painting (until he concludes that he has nothing to say in that medium) and to teaching painting to his fellow residents. He hears of colleagues declining, beginning to die off. A last operation for a carotid blockage is fatal.
Roth has taken great pains to craft an archetypical American life for his readers to contemplate. The nameless protagonist "was reasonable and kindly, an amicable, moderate, industrious man," Roth writes. "He never thought of himself as anything more than an average human being." He is l'homme moyen sensuel to perfection, neither good nor bad -- or, rather, about as good as he is bad. He has served his country. He has no visible politics. He is unreligious (he gave up attending synagogue after his bar mitzvah). He has met his obligations -- his material obligations -- to his immediate families, but he has made no wider benefactions that we hear of. In his thought-life, there's nothing distinctive. He is reasonably stoical about his medical ordeals, which are brought to life in harrowing detail by the author, but toward the end he is less stoical.
There is, in truth, more on the negative side of his ledger than on the credit side. He is self-centered to a fault. In conscious envy of his beloved elder brother's robust health, he turns against this man who has been his sole steadfast friend. He deceives his wives. And he asserts a comfortably exculpatory determinism when he thinks over the many missteps in his life: "There was only our bodies, born to live and die on terms decided by the bodies that had lived and died before us. If he could be said to have located a philosophical niche for himself, that was it -- he'd come upon it early and intuitively, and however elemental, that was the whole of it. Should he ever write an autobiography, he'd call it The Life and Death of a Male Body." Finally, he is insular. He seems never to apprehend that he is suffering at a privileged level, that great medical coverage means everything when the bad luck begins.
Still, it is for some purpose that we are conducted through the salient parts of a life not interesting in itself. What do we say, as readers, waving farewell to this man? What assessment do we make of his life?
It's a feat, but through this clinically secular morality tale, Roth manages to extract love and pity for his created mortal. Bravura descriptions of his skirmishes with death skillfully penetrate the readers' normal, reflexive resistance to such images. Although our hero continues to fine-tune his rationalizations, his remorse -- powerfully depicted -- breaks through. And virtuoso lyrical passages capture the protagonist's yearning for the strength and joy of his youth: "Nothing could extinguish the vitality of that boy whose slender little torpedo of an unscathed body once rode the big Atlantic waves from a hundred yards out in the wild ocean all the way in to shore. Oh, the abandon of it, and the smell of the salt water and the scorching sun! Daylight, he thought, penetrating everywhere, day after summer day of that daylight blazing off a living sea, an optical treasure so vast and valuable that he could have been peering through the jeweler's loupe engraved with his father's initials at the perfect, priceless planet itself -- at his home, the billion-, the trillion-, the quadrillion-carat planet Earth!"
Through consummate art, Roth elevates the links that bind his protagonist to us, the readers who judge his life. From a distance, Everyman looks like a shaggy dog story -- a long, quotidian story whose meaning resides in its final pointlessness. Up close, though, it is a parable that captures, as few works of fiction have, the pathos of Being, as it's manifested even in the favored precincts of affluent America.
Reviewed by Norman Rush Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Sonntag, Februar 03, 2008

Zur Abwechslung

lese ich mal ein kleines Büchlein über Katzen. Das es nur knappe 200 Seiten hat, sollte ich bald damit fertig sein - was meinen Bücherdurchschnitt wieder etwas hebt.


Celia Haddon
Chats with Cats
How to Read Your Cat's Mind

Book Description
With paw, whisker, tail, meow, and posture at their disposal, cats have a whole range of gestures and movements that allow them to communicate their feelings and needs. In Chats with Cats, Celia Haddon explains cat language in all its permutations, providing an insight into their fancies and foibles, their likes and dislikes. By tracing the cat’s ancestry, especially the reasons behind its predatory and territorial instincts, she reveals how to understand and solve many behavioural problems—and even gives pointers on how to train your cat.

Samstag, Februar 02, 2008

Heute Neu

Leider hatte ich heute nicht viel Zeit, um bei Hintermayer so richtig gemütlich zu stöbern. Für ein neues Buch konnte ich mich aber doch entscheiden.



Ismail KADARE

Der General der toten Armee