Kirjanurkkaus

Miksi ystävyys ei ollut yhtä hyvä kuin rakkaussuhde? Miksi se ei ollut jopa parempi? [...] Ystävinä kaksi ihmistä pysyi yhdessä päivästä toiseen, vaikka heitä ei sitonut yhteen seksi tai fyysinen viehätys tai raha tai lapset tai omaisuus, vaan ainoastaan se, että yhteisestä sopimuksesta jatkettiin, omistauduttiin molemminpuoliselle liitolle, jota ei voinut koskaan virallistaa. Ystävyys oli sitä, että seurasi toisen elämän kurjuuden hidasta tipottelua ja pitkiä tylsiä jaksoja ja ajoittaisia voittoja. Se oli sitä, että sai kunnian olla läsnä toisen kurjimmalla hetkellä ja samalla tietää, että sai vastavuoroisesti olla kurjana toisen lähellä. Ällistyttävä, järkyttävä, hauska, liikuttava, lohduton, lohdullinen, kuohuttava... Tälle romaanille lukijat ja kriitikot ovat suoltaneet rutkasti adjektiiveja - osin ristiriitaisiakin. Luin tämän tiiliskiven jo aikoja sitten, mutta arvion kirjoittaminen on ollut vaikeaa: Pieni elämä tuntuu jo hieman loppuunkalutulta, kun sitä on hypetetty kaikki...

I was born with a talent. Not for dance, or comedy, or anything so delightful. I've always had a knack for school. Everything that was taught there, I could learn: quickly and without too much effort. [...] This is not to say that my education was always easy for me. When Ma and I moved to the U.S., I spoke only a few words of English, and for a very long time, I struggled. Girl in Translation has been read and praised in many Finnish book blogs, especially last year when its translation, Käännöksiä , was published. This book was on my To-Be-Read list for a long time before I finally bought it and read it. Although the book is - as its name implies - about translations and translating, I wanted to read it as the untranslated, original English version. The novel tells the story of Kim Chang and her mother, who immigrate to New York from Hong Kong. They are given the chance to start a new life in a new country, thanks to a seemingly helpful relative. But the promised land isn...

Mizzy is becoming - Peter's not stupid, he's crazy but he's not stupid - his favorite work of art, a performance piece if you will, and Peter wants to collect him, he wants to be his master and his confidant [...] Peter doesn't want him to die (he really and truly doesn't), but he wants to curate Mizzy, he wants to be his only... his only. That will do, really. The basic setting and general description of Michael Cunningham's new novel didn't sound like something I could relate to personally: the book tells about Peter and Rebecca Harris, a middle-aged couple living in relative comfort and luxury in Manhattan, NY. Modern urbanites, busy in a hectic metropolis. Both work in the art world: Peter owns an art gallery and Rebecca is a magazine editor. Their everyday life is interrupted by the visit of Rebecca's younger brother, Ethan (or "Mizzy"), who is an impulsive, unruly, dreamy 23-year-old, interesting in "doing something in the arts...

Even after a year, I still had an extremely difficult time doing certain things, like taking showers, for some reason, and getting into elevators, obviously. There was a lot of stuff that made me panicky, like suspension bridges, germs, airplanes, fireworks, Arab people on the subway (even though I'm not racist), Arab people in restaurants and coffee shops and other public places, scaffolding, sewers and subway grates, bags without owners, shoes, people with mustaches, smoke, knots, tall buildings, turbans. Jonathan Safran Foer became a bestselling author with his 2002 debut novel Everything is Illuminated . His second novel, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close , is quite unconventional and postmodern. According to Wikipedia , it is an example of visual writing, a genre that questions the boundaries of the ordinary novel as, simply, 'text on a page'. The novel includes numerous photographs and images that are linked with the story, colourful pages with words that appea...