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decemberthirtyI think I may be coming back... I'm not sure yet. After abandoning this journal for nearly a year, I think I may be interested in trying it again. I recently returned and read all of my old entires, and I realized that it's nice to have such a thorough record of what I have read and my thoughts and feeling about the books. I also liked the discipline of writing something nearly every day. As a student I was writing constantly, but my life no longer requires that level of diligence. I certainly don't want to return to the days of endless papers, but I don't want to lose my ability to not just read, but also to think and write about what I am reading. So that is what I hope to do here. I don't know how long it will last.
Without further ado...
I am currently reading -The Vision of Emma Blau- by Ursula Hegi. It is closely related to her book -Stones from the River-, which I read a few months ago. I tend to enjoy it when authors link their books with each other. I don't necessarily mean sequels or continuing series, but books that can be read independently and yet are related. It's nice to see the minor characters in one book fleshed out in another, or to look on a particular setting years and years later or earlier. That's the sort of connection that these two books share, and I'm enjoying it.
Hegi's writing is interesting. Her style reminds me a little bit of the style of Latin American magical realists, like Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Isabel Allende, which is interesting because Hegi is German. Of course, I haven't read much other German literature to compare her to, so she may very well fit right in with a similar German tradition. Nonetheless, she has a way of integrating the supernatural with everyday life that seems reminiscent of -The House of the Spirits- and -One Hundred Years of Solitude-. Also, she tends to write on an epic scale, telling the story of a family through several generations, or relating 50 or 100 years in the history of a particular town, which of course evokes those other authors... For some reason, however, I tend to enjoy Hegi's books more than I do those of Allende or Garcia Marquez.
Without further ado...
I am currently reading -The Vision of Emma Blau- by Ursula Hegi. It is closely related to her book -Stones from the River-, which I read a few months ago. I tend to enjoy it when authors link their books with each other. I don't necessarily mean sequels or continuing series, but books that can be read independently and yet are related. It's nice to see the minor characters in one book fleshed out in another, or to look on a particular setting years and years later or earlier. That's the sort of connection that these two books share, and I'm enjoying it.
Hegi's writing is interesting. Her style reminds me a little bit of the style of Latin American magical realists, like Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Isabel Allende, which is interesting because Hegi is German. Of course, I haven't read much other German literature to compare her to, so she may very well fit right in with a similar German tradition. Nonetheless, she has a way of integrating the supernatural with everyday life that seems reminiscent of -The House of the Spirits- and -One Hundred Years of Solitude-. Also, she tends to write on an epic scale, telling the story of a family through several generations, or relating 50 or 100 years in the history of a particular town, which of course evokes those other authors... For some reason, however, I tend to enjoy Hegi's books more than I do those of Allende or Garcia Marquez.
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Date: 2002-10-29 11:30 am (UTC)I have some other Hegi book in my pile waiting. stones from the river totally devastated me, but in a beautiful and surreal way, very similar sounding to what you're connected to marquez. anything to reccommend by allende? i've never read her...
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Date: 2002-10-29 01:27 pm (UTC)I haven't read a whole lot of Allende. My favorite out of the books of hers that I've read is -Of Love and Shadows-. It has less of the typical magical realism stuff, but seemed to me to be imbued with greater feeling and much truer to life. Some magical realism strikes me as somewhat gimicky, and this book certainly was not. Of course, in talking about Allende, you have to mention -The House of the Spirits-, but I didn't actually enjoy that as much. It's certainly worth reading, and is a very impressive achievement, but I was very disappointed by the ending. I don't want to reveal anything, so I'll just say that it seemed to me that she was about to make a really powerful statement and she chickened out.
So there you have it... It's nice to hear from you.