November 2008 Archives

Reviewed by John Glover, Reference Librarian for the Humanities

Many writers pursue hobbies, interests, or avocations that are only tangentially related to the printed page. Joyce Carol Oates has a keen interest in boxing. Stephen King's love for and occasional performance of rock n' roll is well known. Salman Rushdie has a passion for acting and has had cameo roles on the big screen. Haruki Murakami has a thing for running.

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running contains much of interest about the author and his writing, but running truly is the focus. Though one could read the entire book as a metaphor about writing, that would do a disservice to his thoughtful, plain-spoken meditations on running. Murakami talks about training, pain, food, marathons, half-marathons, ultra-marathons, triathalons, and all manner of things having to do with the body's health.

Often he does refer to his writing life here, talking about what does or does not make a novelist, but this book is a joy to read on its own terms, talking about the pleasures and pains of putting one foot after the other. The anecdotes, from running the route of the original marathon in reverse to jogging by the Charles River in summertime, are well deployed to illustrate the themes of each chapter, and make for fine stories in and of themselves.

Cabell Library PL856.U673 Z465 2008

Reviewed by Renée Bosman, Reference Librarian for Government and Public Affairs and Reference Collection Coordinator

Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri’s Pulitzer Prize-winning collection of short stories is exquisitely well-crafted and worth a read, even if you tend to shy away from short stories. Several stories do touch upon the theme of cultural identity explored at length in her later novel The Namesake, but this often serves as background to their ordinary human trials; miscarriage, marital tension, and loss are some of the issues faced by both her Indian and Indian-American characters.

There is a thread of unfulfillment that runs through these stories, whether it is Mrs. Das and her marriage in “Interpreter of Maladies” or young Eliot observing his lonely babysitter in “Mrs. Sen’s,” yet Lahiri avoids injecting their lives with pessimism. Instead, many of her characters display a resiliency to life’s everyday challenges that can be uplifting; one observes, “there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination.” This sentiment beautifully describes Interpreter of Maladies – perhaps ordinary on the surface, but a work of extraordinary beauty.

Cabell Library PS3562.A316 N36 2003