Adventures in Reading

Readers may be interested in the following books which have been added to stock at Galway City Library:

Unthinkable Tenderness, by Juan Gelman: Univesity of California Press
Argentine poet Juan Gelman, who suffered wrenching personal loss under his country's military rule and wrote of it in poignant verse, received the Spanish-speaking world's highest literary honour last Wednesday. The ceremony served up a juxtaposition that would have been unthinkable 20 years ago: Gelman, a former leftist militant, ex-communist and political outsider, shaking hands warmly with a king. In his acceptance speech Gelman defended the validity of poetry in what he called ‘these materialistic times of poverty.’

Nobody's Home, by Dubravka Ugresic: Telegram Books
"I am standing in a bank in Amsterdam. I am waiting for the people in front of me to finish their business at the teller's window. The young bank clerk snaps: 'You haven't got a number...' The essence of communist daily life was not its lack of democracy, or the restriction of political, religious, sexual and other freedoms. It was the unending, everyday degradation of ordinary human reason. A person who has had experience in both systems, capitalism and communism, cannot help but wonder whether the essentials of everyday communist life have sneaked illegally over to the West? (Extract)

The Charterhouse of Parma, by Stendhal: Modern Library
"As I was carrying this book around with me that summer, I asked myself many times why it was such a pleasure just to know the book was at my side. In reading this book I experienced the joy of youth, the will to live, the power of hope, the fact of death, and love, and solitude. As in novels, there is in life a genuine wish, an impulse, a race towards happiness. But there is more than that. A person wishes to reflect on that desire, that impulse, and a good novel becomes an integral part of our lives and the world around us, bringing us closer to the meaning of life…" Orhan Pamuk