TOP 100 BOOK SITES
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| No. 1 Omission From Top 10 Book List: Women Publishers Weekly's choices for top books of the year has drawn protests from a women's literary group, which notes that there are no female writers on the list. feeds.nytimes.com |
Letters: Herman rains on Tone's parade Do I detect a certain regret that Tony Blair failed in his bid to become president of the European council (Comment, Leaders, 20 November)? Is there a single person left in this country who does not share in the shame of the deceit over Iraq?Anthony MarrianLondon • It is a major missed opportunity for the future prosperity, and indeed safety, of Europe that Tony Blair has been deemed too big a politician for the fragile egos of European leaders. The excuse of Iraq has been used to justify ignoring a man who has both the strategic judgment and courage to represent Europe in the way that its size and importance needs. We are all the losers.Anthony GarrettFalkland, Fife• There are so many negatives about Herman van Rompuy. He's never declared an illegal war, never claimed Iraq has tons of chemical and biological arms, and nuclear weapons; and he's never been addressed as "Yo, Rompy" by an US president. How can such a person command respect across Europe and the rest of the world?Gordon MottLondon • I cannot be alone in preferring haiku to dodgy dossiers.Jon Nixon Kendal, Cumbria• Noble Brit, hero Flem, / Herman rains on Tone's parade. / Horse-trade in Brussels.Michael RaffertyOmagh, County Tyrone European UnionHerman Van RompuyLady AshtonTony BlairPoetryguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone by Eduardo Galeano Heroes rub shoulders with villains and apes in Eduardo Galeano's magical history of mankind, writes Alberto ManguelThe speculum, espéculo or mirror, understood as a sort of whimsical anthology or commonplace book, is a literary genre of venerable antiquity. In Spanish, one of the earliest of these exemplary works is a 14th-century version of the Speculum laicorum attributed to the English divine John of Howden, translated under the title El espéculo de los legos, in which brief factual chronicles are interspersed with gossip on various subjects, mini-biographies of heroes and saints, and legends culled from various sources. Among speculum authors, the most distinguished is the Uruguayan Eduardo Galeano, who has made the genre his trademark, notably in his three-volume masterpiece, Memory of Fire. His new book, Mirrors, explicitly declares its lineage in its title.Perhaps this specular style fits Galeano's itinerant life, picking up stories in different countries and finding their echoes in various settings. Having started his literary career as a political cartoonist, he left his native country in 1973 to escape the military dictatorship. Unfortunately, his chosen sanctuary was Argentina, where an even bloodier dictatorship had begun. Galeano founded and edited a political magazine, Crisis, but was forced to leave once more for exile in Spain. Here he lived until 1984, when he returned to Uruguay. His account of the exploitation of the continent, Open Veins of Latin America, was recently voted one of the five most influential books in Latin American history by El País.Memory of Fire covered the history of the American continent from its legendary beginnings to the political realities of the 1980s. Mirrors is both more modest and more ambitious. Modest, because it runs to nearly 400 pages, while Memory of Fire came close to 1,000; ambitious, because here the subject is not limited to the Americas but covers the entire globe, from the tales of Genesis to accounts of the electronic revolution. The Index of Names at the end of the book gives an idea of its scope: Achilles, al-Qaida, Baudelaire, Bismarck, Fidel Castro, the Emperor Shi Huang Chin, Churchill, Don Quixote, Friedrich Engels, Che Guevara, Ham the chimpanzee, Jesus, King Leopold of Belgium, Christopher Marlowe, Nostradamus, Pelé, Rousseau, Spartacus, Toulouse-Lautrec and Oscar Wilde all make cameo appearances. As a true speculum demands, Mirrors is made up of anecdotes, portraits, riddles, poems and fables; nothing is lost by sampling its stories at random. For instance, here is a story about God in our time:"Dietrich Bonhoeffer is imprisoned in the concentration camp at Flossenberg. The guards make all the prisoners watch the execution of three condemned men. Someone standing next to Bonhoeffer whispers: 'So, where is God?'"And Bonhoeffer, who is a theologian, points to the hanged men swinging in the dawn light: 'There.'"A few days later, it is his turn."Because of its very nature, a speculum never quite forms a whole of uniform quality and interest. And yet Galeano's voice lends Mirrors its coherence, transforms the book into a patchwork of particular feats and foibles picked from our long and common history. Our record on earth, Galeano seems to say, is far from glorious, and there is more madness than method in our accomplishments. Mysteriously, however, something good perhaps remains. One of the last pieces tells the following story, under the title "The Road Goes On": "When someone dies, when his time is up, what happens to the wanderings, desirings, and speakings that were called by his name?"Among the Indians of the upper Orinoco, he who dies loses his name. His ashes are stirred into plantain soup or corn wine and everybody eats. After the ceremony no one ever names the dead person again: the dead one, now living in other bodies, called by other names, wanders, desires, and speaks."Alberto Manguel's latest book isguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
‘They Planted Hatred in Our Hearts’ Joe Sacco’s account of mass killings of Palestinians in 1956 impressively combines graphic artistry and investigative reporting. feeds.nytimes.com |
Stephenie Meyer's 'Twilight' series sweeps top four spots Led by Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series, vampires devoured USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list in 2009. rssfeeds.usatoday.com |