This time, it’s the Opera house who provides the victim, in the person of successful diva Ida Rosenkrantz, found dead in her villa, apparently by an overdose of laudanum. It gives Tallis a great opportunity to create meetings between his two fictitious characters and famous (real) director Gustav Mahler. Mahler, composer and director of the Opera house, was acclaimed, but also challenged, partly because he was Jewish, and because he imposed to the musicians a very strict discipline contrary to previous customs (apparently it was customary before the 20th century for opera singers to pay a professional “claque”, a group of people whose job was to cheer and applause every time the singer would appear, even if it disrupted the show).

Music is also an important subplot when Liebermann investigates, through psychoanalysis and more conventional means, a possible murder between two (fictitious) composers a generation before. It was a relief to my appetite that Tallis should choose love of music above love of Viennese pastries in this mystery. He’d had quite a sweet tooth in the previous episodes, although this time Mahler gets to share his favorite desert: Marillenknödel, apricot dumpling, and Lieberman ad-libs in a very Freudian fashion about its suggestive presentation (see here photo and recipe in English!).

As always the particular atmosphere of 1900s Vienna is very richly painted (there are notes from Tallis about his historical sources), and I find it rather nice that antisemitism, which was prevalent at the time, is part of the scenery, part of usual life without being yet another ominous sign of events to come decades later.

After my recent visit to Vienna and the movie A Dangerous Method about Jung and Freud (Litlove’s take on it here), the universe seems to put me on the track to some Freudian readings for this year. But I’m not usually one to follow straight directions, so who knows?

A book-lover, yes, but I don’t normally care so much about what format they come in. How else would I be so tolerant of these unassuming, yellowing editions I receive through Bookmooch, with torn pages, creased corners and weak spines. I’m okay with whatever book I get from libraries, and I have been known to write into books when I was a student.

But during the holidays (yes, those that happened eons ago), I found myself in front of those magnificent Virago Modern Classics, and these are the loveliest books I’ve seen for ages. I’d heard Danielle (among others) say great things about Virago, but never before had I had those pretty darlings in my hands.

This is where my lust for notebooks and nice stationery collides with my love for books. Especially the lush blue Liberty cover art from The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim. Sigh.

In my next life I want to be a Virago Modern Classics.

Why doesn’t it appeal to me as much as, for example, the Illiad I’d so much loved?

This is rather obvious I’m afraid: it’s not Greek, and it’s not a tragedy.

I found out that I’d loved the pathetic in tragedy very much and that while I was clutching my hankie and holding back my tears, it had kept my mind off a very inconvenient truth: that antique civilization is quite foreign to us modern readers and that it’s not that easy to empathize with their world view.

This problem is more glaring in the Aeneid: the very purpose of the text (commissioned by emperor August to Virgil) is to glorify Rome’s origins and its war triumphs. This made me uncomfortable from the start, because I’d rather put myself in the shoes of the other guys, probably linked to our Christian culture.

Because, let’s be a bit blunt, why oh why does Trojan Aeneas assume that he should get a new kingdom somewhere? (hint: because the Gods said so). Especially at the expense of other people? But if you just take the Gods with a pinch of salt (after all, they don’t seem to agree all on the matter up there), here’s a guy who miraculously escapes being killed by an army of Greeks and with a bunch of friends and family flees on boats. Why isn’t he content to lay low somewhere? The first land they reach was friendly enough, they could have settled down there among cousins.

But no, Aeneas has to listen to dreams and prophecies, and for years he roams until he reaches the shore the Gods pointed him. Even when his own people get tired, he forges forward with his plans. What he ends up doing is actually robbing perfectly peaceful people of their land and customs. Everywhere he landed, he has been welcomed, but who would want such a guest? Like the guy who not only sleeps on your couch, but ends up flirting with your own girlfriend? Do you wonder that his plans are met with some resistance?

The other point I couldn’t just swallow was the treatment of women throughout the Aeneid. Perhaps today is not the best day to speak about poor Dido and all the others. So I’ll keep it for another time.

But still, I wasn’t very vocal about it because I’m not there yet. There’s still a long way to go.

First it took me a while to choose which version I’d read. Because let’s face it, I’m nowhere near reading this in original voice (although I took Latin classes aeons ago), I do need subtitles, and lively ones.

I remember reading the Iliad and being mesmerized by it, so I’m very aware that I need to feel comfortable with a text and not use a stifling, scholarly one, for it will be the key to the whole experience.

I first visited Gutenberg.org and couldn’t quite swallow the classic (and MIT-approved) Dryden version that starts like that:

Arms, and the man I sing, who, forc’d by fate, / And haughty Juno’s unrelenting hate, / Expell’d and exil’d, left the Trojan shore. / Long labors, both by sea and land, he bore, / And in the doubtful war, before he won / The Latian realm, and built the destin’d town; / His banish’d gods restor’d to rites divine, / And settled sure succession in his line, / From whence the race of Alban fathers come, / And the long glories of majestic Rome.

Ugh… This would only end in disaster. Then I stopped at a very useful (albeit school-oriented) page, that led me towards Theodore C. Williams:

Arms and the man I sing, who first made way, predestined exile, from the Trojan shore to Italy, the blest Lavinian strand. Smitten of storms he was on land and sea by violence of Heaven, to satisfy stern Juno’s sleepless wrath; and much in war he suffered, seeking at the last to found the city, and bring o’er his fathers’ gods to safe abode in Latium; whence arose the Latin race, old Alba’s reverend lords, and from her hills wide-walled, imperial Rome.

I started to breathe a bit better (but still the “whence” made me cringe), then I got to the modern one, from A.S. Kline:

I sing of arms and the man, he who, exiled by fate, first came from the coast of Troy to Italy, and to Lavinian shores – hurled about endlessly by land and sea, by the will of the gods, by cruel Juno’s remorseless anger, long suffering also in war, until he founded a city and brought his gods to Latium: from that the Latin people came, the lords of Alba Longa, the walls of noble Rome.

It makes a world of difference, isn’t it? It was funny to see how, for example, Juno’s unrelenting hate morphed into sleepless wrath, then into remorseless anger. It really doesn’t convey the same images, right? And of course, I don’t know which one, if any, is closer to the original.

Then I went to my neighborhood library and setting aside my previous considerations, I ended up choosing a French classic edition from the Association Guillaume Budé, a version that most French students like because the original Latin faces the French translation and there are plenty of notes (and a map! love maps!). I found it surprisingly lively and still different from the English translations.

I’m currently on Book 6 (slow and steady is my thing), I’ll be commenting some more in the next few days, probably using both French and whichever English version that would be closer to the French one.

My dear husband has obviously read this blog to get some ideas and he decided that I needed a great number of books for the season. Of course I won’t contradict him …

Obviously he seemed to consider that I should have more of what I enjoy: mysteries!

• Liza Cody, Gimme more
• Amanda Cross, The James Joyce murder
• Sarah Caudwell, Thus was Adonis murdered

Then he apparently realized that I’d gotten into a “Prairie phase” and he indulged me:

• A biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder by William Anderson
• A star memoir by “Nellie Oleson”: Confessions of a Prairie Bitch, by Alison Arngrim

I burst out laughing when I discover that last title, because I never thought I’d ever read the memoir of a TV star, and even less of Nellie Oleson’s actress!

And then he added a bit of “this and that”, from my various areas of interest:

• Désirs de France: an essay where 15 foreign correspondents based in France analyze our country
• A cookbook of Japanese everyday cuisine (no, not only sushi!)

And then my friends and extended family seemed to think I needed some more!

• Feng Hua, Seul demeure son parfum: a Chinese mystery (or thriller, I must check)
• Jamie Oliver: Jamie’s 30-Minute Meals
• William Faulkner, Sanctuary

What a glorious mix, especially when I can jump from Faulkner to Jamie Oliver! If I ever get to read them all, what a year 2012 will be!

Surprisingly enough, the figures themselves are pretty consistent with those of last year. I’ve read 70+ books, the typical one would be a novel by a British or American woman, published after 2000. Crime (and spy) novels make up for a third of my reading, quite an increase from last year. Non-fiction comes a bit under one-fifth of my reading.

Things that do not change are the few books I managed to read prior to 20C. I read only 10 books published before 195o… and I’m not proud of it (although I’m still in the middle of the Aeneid and didn’t count it yet). For sure I should do something about it this year, but I’m not good at reading plans, so who knows where 2012 will bring me? Somehow it’s much easier to grab a fancy, comfy thriller published last year than an Alexandre Dumas three-decker or a play by Euripides, but once I’ve started them it’s a lot more fun than what I’d expected.

Things that changed this year is that I read more Asian books and more YA novels too (and a few were Asian YA !). I’ve also read more books by authors I do enjoy (Sarah Caudwell, Qiu Xiaolong, Philip Kerr…). But I also enjoyed visiting uncharted territories, such as little-know Chinese best-sellers (Chi Li’s Life Show, although I doubt it has been translated into English), Dutch disturbing  WWII novel, alternative political-economic pamphlet, Japanese novellas about the workplace dynamics, an analysis of Euripides’ works etc.) I also gave in to commercial successes and didn’t regret it: at last I read the first volume of Harry Potter, Hillary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, Elizabeth Gilbert’s Committed, William Boyd’s Restless, and they all were well worth the hype.

That’s why choosing a few best for 2011 has been more difficult than I thought, because I could easily come up with a list of 20. But if I have to par it down to 5, here are my favorites for the year:

- Best crime in the categories “discovery” and “witty”: Sarah Caudwell for Sirens Sang of Murder (got me chuckling about tax evasion… Yes, it’s possible!)

- Best crime in the categories “gruesome” and “rediscovery after a decade”: Philipp Kerr for One from the Other

- Best moving novel with a strong war context: a tie-in between Ru by Kim Thuy, and The Gardens of Kyoto by Kate Walbert (I defy you not to need a kleenex or two)

Perhaps unsurprisingly, if I have to name but one title for the whole year, that would be Hillary Mantel’s Wolf Hall. It’s not an original choice but I was just floored by the book. I’m just joining the crowd who awaits the follow-up with growing impatience.

Alexandre Dumas, The Lady with the Velvet Collar (1851):

A short, spooky classics that I borrowed from the YA shelves. I guess teenagers now are used to much worse gore and Halloween stories, but Dumas must be spinning in his grave because I guess he meant serious (adult) readership. The hero of his tale is the real writer E.T.A. Hoffmann of Offenbach’s fame, who supposedly wished to visit Paris in 1793 . Mmh, perhaps not the best of times to enjoy the Eiffel Tower and les petites femmes the country of arts and freedom, at the height of revolutionary Terror. His first impression of the city of lights is the public beheading of Madame Du Barry, the King’s mistress, at the Guillotine, and the poor lad is understandably in shock. The rest of the novella is a mix of supernatural and horror, and quite successful to chill the atmosphere, except for the very verbose Dumas writing (I guess he was paid by the word).

Chi Li, Life Show (2001)

A contemporary Chinese bitter-sweet romp about ordinary people in Wuhan. The novel follows a family with four siblings. The pillar of the family is a courageous woman, small restaurant owner whose specialty is cooked ducks necks (inspiring cuisine, uh?). I loved every page of it, as it managed to reflect the simple life of many Chinese. The plot didn’t exactly favor happy endings, and it was probably for the best.

Sarah Caudwell, The Sybil in her Grave (2000)

I love Sarah Caudwell’s witty mysteries, that’s about as simple as that. Need to elaborate?  Tax lawyers (with insider dealing scandals) meet classic English countryside murder à la Inspector Barnaby, complete with the vicar and gossip. Also a funny sub-plot involving the completion of remodeling works at the barristers’ office that got me laughing in recognition (apparently getting craftsmen to show up and finish projects is difficult on both sides of the Channel). If you haven’t try Caudwell, write her up in your 2012 reading plans, trust me.

Well, that’s it for this year! I’ll be compiling stats soon, but in the meantime, I wish you a very happy New Year, whether you’re celebrating big or keeping it quiet. At the Smithereens’, we keep it very simple this year and make a big waffle dinner. I’m off to prepare a huge jug of batter for the entire evening…

Thanks to this motivation, I ate new foods, signed up for a tai-chi class, went to museums I’d never tried, learnt to identify lots of flowers, followed improbable paths over the internet, attended an online course from Yale University on the old testament Hebrew bible… and went outside my comfort range for some books.

This one falls right into this category. Without this challenge, I’d never ever have contemplated borrowing this book from the library. Serge Latouche is an economist associated with alternative movements and has become a rather famous theorist of de-growth. This book’s title is quite provocative, as it can be translated as “Towards a society of frugal wealth”. His subtitle is “Misinterpretations and controversies about de-growth”.

(Ahem, don’t shoot. It’s difficult enough for me to tackle a political / economic pamphlet as it is – and even more to review it publicly. I know lots of people won’t agree with me).

Although I found myself agreeing to most facts about the stalemate global economic situation and the unsustainable contradictions and follies of the liberal system (for lack of better words), I could not help but find the book totally utopian in terms of solutions. Funny how we can agree on one point but totally diverge on the road to take, right?

Latouche not only criticizes the current economic model, that has fatal consequences on the environment and on people, but demands that we shift towards a more moderate model, where happiness wouldn’t be measured in terms of financial wealth, where only reasonable needs would be covered instead of greed and egoism. In theory I’m all for it, although I scratch my head when it sounds way too Pollyannaish.

The trouble started when I realized that, although he goes on and on about what de-growth is not (not a return to middle-ages, not a return of women at home etc. etc.), Latouche remained vague about exactly what he suggested and how to do it. The best I got from my reading was that we should return to the level of comfort of the 1960s so that everyone would be able to work and be comfortable. And there was next to nil about how to achieve that.

How in a free democracy can any leader say to the people who have chosen him (or her, let’s be idealistic): “come on guys, give up your big house and your smartphone and move over to a smaller condo so that the guy who sleeps on the street can have his share too?”. To my knowledge, whenever this was done, it wasn’t democracy and it ended up in bloodshed and terror.

Some people can take good resolutions and change their own consuming habits, choose local foods, buy from sustainable trade networks, avoid waste, give more to charities and recycle, but in my opinion it’s a social and individual shift linked to a better awareness and education. We can’t imagine that everybody will desire that, and I can’t imagine a (free) political system promoting this model.

Alright, I reckon it  was a challenge. I don’t do utopia. Please prove me wrong if you feel like it.

His small Shanghai neighborhood of the Red Dust Lane is astonished: Mr. Ma and his wife seemed harmless enough, hardly making a living out of their tiny bookshop. But the Party is always right, and the neighbors know better than to meddle in Mr. Ma’s misfortune, all the more as asking questions might be dangerous and attract unwanted attention.

As Mr. Ma is released in 1982, ten years ahead of the jail sentence term, the neighbors learn that it was a suspicious foreign book, Doctor Zhivago, that caused his detention. Will Mr. Ma re-open his bookshop? No, Mr. Ma launches into a new venture, that proves surprisingly successful, and may or may not be related to his love for literature…

The novella was a lot of fun. I read on Qiu Xiaolong’s website that a whole collection of short stories happening in the Shanghai Red Dust Lane will be soon released in English, after being published as a serial in a French newspaper (I missed that, obviously).

But before I rejoiced, I had a moment or two of complete frustration. The reason for this bout of fury? (I bet you wouldn’t think that I was such a furious creature). Just look at the French cover art. A quaint little bookshop with a bright red flag over it… A single yellow star… Doesn’t it strike a bell?

This is NOT the Chinese flag (that has one big star in the corner and 4 little ones around). This is Vietnam’s, you idiot of a publisher… ! (Further far less respectful terms of adress are repressed here, just because it’s after Christmas and peace to the world). Was it that difficult to find the picture of a Chinese bookshop?? (if the color of the flag wasn’t flagrant enough, there’s also romanized Vietnamese written above the shop instead of ideograms…) I wonder how this blunder could go unchecked during the whole process. Sigh…

Let’s at least be grateful that Qiu Xiaolong has found faithful readers over here, and let’s hope that his publishers will be more careful next time…

I’m trying my best to finish all those book reviews before 2011 strikes midnight… but in the meantime I hope that you are all enjoying great holidays with your loved ones, with or without books!
This is a small winter angel that seemed to wink at me in Vienna a few days ago… May your wishes be fulfilled for the season!