The Color Purple– Alice Walker  (1982) 
Novel written largely in a black southern dialect phonetic spelling. I’m not a fan of this. The last novel I read, The Red Badge of Courage, had lots of the same phonetically spelled dialog between the soldiers, and I didn’t care for it then either. Dickens often does the same, but at least with the American versions, I’m familiar with what they actually sound like so I can read it and hear it as it’s supposed to sound. 

The novel can be a bit tough to read since it speaks of rape and abuse. The main character, Celie, goes through a series of degrading situations, each time trying to keep her head above water. As she says, she doesn’t fight, she survives. The book is written in a format of letters she writes to God, and other letters she writes to her sister. There are some letters her sister writes back to her as well.  

The novel was quick reading, and it was engaging. 

Memoirs of a Geisha- Arthur Golden  (1997) 
“I had to wonder if men were so blinded by beauty that they would feel privileged to live their lives with an actual demon, so long as it was a beautiful demon”. 

This is the story of Chiyo, a fisherman’s daughter in the west of Japan in the mid 20th century. Her mother gets sick and will die, and her father, too old to take care of 2 young daughters, is propositioned by a local businessman to sell his daughters. Chiyo is a beauty and is sold to a geisha house in Kyoto. Her sister is sold to a whorehouse in the same city. The sister, Satsu, stays for a month or so, then runs away and returns to the village where she is married to a village boy. 

Chiyo tries to run away but is unsuccessful. She is mistreated, but because of her beauty, another geisha sees her potential and takes her under her wing. She eventually becomes one of the most successful geisha in Kyoto. But this is the 1930’s and 40’s and as Japan’s involvement in the war brings ever-greater disaster, life gets much harder.  

The story plot revolves around her interactions with a few of the other girls, as well as her customers. Particularly important are the rich important men who pay so much for her company as an entertainer. But she is essentially owned by her house and rented out; including her virginity and eventually a patronship that will land her as the mistress of the one who will bring the most benefit to the house where she lives.  

She dreams of one particular man and in the end does end up with him- only as a mistress. But in post-war Japan she accompanies him to New York on several business trips and eventually lands there. 

Il giorno della civetta- Leonardo Sciascia  (1961) 
The title, in English, would be “The Day of the Owl”.  

This is something of a detective novel. A small business owner in a small town in Sicily is gunned down. It turns out that he had refused to pay the protection money to the local mafia boss. The investigator has to overcome the reticence of the locals to testify against the mafia. He finally does get some actionable intelligence and makes a few arrests, but in the end, it turns out that this thing called the mafia is too well connected and widespread to eradicate. It has protection running up to the highest levels of government. Along the way, the author uses the characters to comment on Sicily, Sicilians, and the reasons for the situation. 

Classics of Marxism Vol 2- Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky 
The second in what I’ve termed: The commie classics. This volume includes: 

Wage, Labor, and Capital- Karl Marx 

Value, Price, and Profit- Karl Marx 

Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder- Vladimir Lenin 

In Defense of October- Leon Trotsky 

Stalinism and Bolshevism- Leon Trotsky 

This was more interesting than I thought, but then again, I started out dreading having to read more commie drivel. So with the bar set that low, I suppose it could only go up. But…. the selections start out with Marx’s theories about economics. Then Lenin is writing in 1920, three years after the Revolution, and bragging about how Socialism had finally been taken from theory to an actual worker’s state. 

Then Trotsky, writing in 1932, is defending the Soviet Union, in the face of problems. The final piece is from 1937, acknowledging the problems I had been cataloging, and essentially saying it couldn’t have been any different, and the haters can shut it.  

And this from a book compiled by Marxists.org. I dunno… seems pretty condemning to me, but apparently they haven’t caught on yet. 

North and South- Elizabeth Gaskell  (1855) 
I already posted a longer review of this novel so I won’t rehash it here, but I had seen someone post a review of the book a while back and I decided to add it to the list. Finally got to read it this month. It may end up being one of my favorite books for the way it weaves a love story in with philosophic and economic questions. I pretty much loved it. 

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle  (1892) 
This is a collection of 12 short detective stories. It’s not the first Sherlock Holmes story, but it’s my first reading of one, so I chose the collection.  

Around the World in Eighty Days- Jules Verne  (1873) 
Classic story of a classic Englishman who travels around the world in response to a bet with his gentlemen friends at his club. He is utterly imperturbable in every scenario, no matter how wild. Written by a Frenchman.  

This will be all I finish for the month. I’m starting Murakami’s 1Q84 today, but since that’s about 1150 pages, I won’t be done with it before the end of the month. 

answers will always be in the same place.