73. John Grogan - Marley & Me

Marley & Me by John Grogan is not a book I would normally read. I won this book at my previous job and I decided to give it a go this week. I've seen the film, of which the poster is on the book (I hate that!); but the book is just so... Simple.

It's a cute true story about a columnist who writes about his family's rambunctious dog, Marley. Nothing big really happens though, he takes us through Marley's puppy years and ends, very fittingly, at his last breath. It's no literary masterpiece. It's just a story about a guy and his dog.

What annoyed me, was that I watched a few episodes of The Dog Whisperer on YouTube and John and Jen Grogan were on it because they couldn't control the dog they had after Marley passed away. This annoys me, because it's quite clear that they just can't raise a dog. The second thing that I found a bit too much was the few pages at the end of the book where John Grogan suddenly starts talking about 9/11. The below passage doesn't add anything to the story, especially since he contemplates the below while visiting the site of the crash in 2003:

"I felt something else, as well - an amazement at the boundless capacity of the human heart, at once big enough to absorb a tragedy of this magnitude yet still find room for the little moments of personal pain and heartache that are part of any life. In my case, one of those little moments was my failing dog. With a tinge of shame, I realized that even amid the colossus of human heartbreak that was Flight 93, I could still feel the sharp pang of the loss I knew was coming." (Grogan 299)

72. Sophie van der Stap - En wat als dit liefde is

This book En wat als dit liefde is, was written by Sophie van der Stap who is famous for her book Meisje met negen pruiken in which she describes living with her cancer treatment. When I say famous I mean famous in the Netherlands, although I believe it has been translated in quite a few languages. I've never read her bestseller, but when my mum visited me in Edinburgh she brought the book I'm reviewing here, so I decided to give it a go.

People who have been reading my blog may have noticed that I'm not a big fan of Dutch literature. I often find it either contains too many explicit sex scenes, or it describes the Second World War, or it just mixes both these topics. This weeks' book though is nothing like that. I'm not sure I want to describe it as literature either though. No reason to get sucked into a debate about which term to use for this novel, let me just quickly describe what it is about (don't worry, this won't take long as I know that there are no translations for this book and only my fellow Dutchies may find this interesting).

The book is about a blind woman in Paris Marianne de Grenelle who likes to be thought of as invisible and likes to spy on her neighbours without anyone noticing her, and her friendship with socialite Tara who has one lover after the other and likes to describe all these events in her blog. This novel is about what love really is and the fact that everyone always thinks the grass is greener on the other side. Marianne has left her boyfriend 25 years ago and is not sure if this was the right decision and Tara cannot chose between her abundance of men. Both of the women are jealous of the other's situation.

71. Deborah Levy - Swimming Home

A few days late and all I can say about this Man Booker Shortlisted novel called Swimming Home by Deborah Levy is that it's not my style at all. I think I stopped paying attention from page 5.

It's about a girl who is found floating in the pool of a group of people vacationing in France. They take this strange girl in their house and she destroys the whole family dynamic, or actually she brings on the destruction that seems to have been pending for a long time.

I'm not so sure about this description, because I really did faze out when I read it. When pages go on like the below, you've lost me. Not a success in my opinion and I'm happy this book didn't win.

A woman with a helmet of permed hennaed hair stopped her to ask if she knew the way to Rue Francois Aune. The lenses of her big sunglasses were smeared with what looked like dried milk. She spoke in English with an accent that Isabel thought might be Russian. The woman pointed a finger laden with rings at a mechanic in oily navy overalls, lying under a motorbike, as if to suggest Isabel ask him for directions on her behalf." (Levy 28)

70. Tan Twan Eng - The Garden of Evening Mists

I have gotten a bit lost in trying to watch all the James Bond's ever made on On Demand. I'm at the fifth film, but due to this I am late finishing this amazing book by Tan Twan Eng. The Garden of Evening Mists is very enticingly written. It's unlike anything I have ever read before and therefore it's very educational.

This book was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2012 and I can see why. It tells the story of judge Yun Ling Teoh, who was a Japanese prisoner during World War II and later served as an apprentice of a Japanese gardener Nakamura Aritomo. She struggles between fulfilling the promise she made her sister, who died in this same prisoner's camp where she was held, of making a real Japanese garden and trying to get over her survivor guilt.

It's late, because I read two thirds of the book this evening so I'm not going to write any more. Also my words would not be able to do this book any justice. Hopefully, the Man Booker Prize will do that for me (please note that I'm saying this without having read the other books, so this remark is not all final).