I did what could be called ‘cram-reading’ to get through the rest of the four titles this weekend, but despite the lower back pain associated with sitting for long periods of time, I am thrilled to have done so, as the books I selected were excellent overall.
Alan Lightman’s A Sense of the Mysterious : Science and the Human Spirit
was simply inspiring. I preferred the autobiographical segments to those about other scientists, mostly because the enthusiasm he feels for both his crafts (physics and novel-writing) rubs off on the reader. Lightman revels in the inquisitiveness and determination of humans in a way I very much relate to.
The next book I completed was a French novel I had been glued to all week, Yasmina Khadra’s L'attentat
. The English version, entitled The Attack, will be released in May of this year. Whatever you do, make sure you get to it. This is a positively gripping story, and the language the author uses, very sophisticated. A bomb goes off in Tel-Aviv and the suicide bomber, a woman, turns out to be the wife of the protagonist, a surgeon named Dr. Jafaari. We follow the doctor’s reactions to the news: his initial disbelief, then bewilderment, then despair at what has happened, and finally, his quest to understand how his wife could carry out such a deed.
I decided to go with non-fiction to cap off the week, as the last title really needed to steep. Alberto Manguel’s A Reading Diary : A Passionate Reader's Reflections on a Year of Books (subtitled differently in the United States) proved to be a good choice. The author is incredibly erudite, and in this book, he revisits one volume from his past a month, recording his thoughts in diary format. My first reaction was that my father would really like it, mostly because of the liberally scattered quotes, lists, and telling anecdotes throughout the text. For my part, I love any book that forces me to take notes, especially because of the beauty of the words or thoughts conveyed. Tomorrow I shall have to take out others in Manguel’s oeuvre so that I may delve further into the literary richness he has to offer.
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