Coopers :Sparkling Ale

I haven't written about beer for ages. I simply don't have time and I haven't drank anything exciting for ages. This one, on the other hand is quite refreshing. It is clear and bubbly, but has a deep sediment at the end. After first sip you might think it is an alco-pop, but there really is more to it. It is a real ale, full of flavour, plus bubbles, which changes the way you perceive the beer. I am going through my fourth six-pack of the stuff and still haven't quite worked it out.
The other surprising thing is that this is an Australian beer - for some reason is just doesn't taste/look like an Australian beer, but maybe I am just having the wrong opinion about the land of the marsupials.

Kurt Vonnegut: Slaughterhuse Five and Cat's cradle

First, check this link out. I only read Slaugherhourse Five because I could get it for free on my Nook. The really embarrassing thing is that I absolutely abhorred Kurt Vonnegut as a teenager, I thought that he is really childish. I nearly left Maja for this! Haha, now I think he is really fun to read. Not a superintellectual, but his sarcastical writing style really gets under your skin. I've read two books and they really read as one large piece of work, similar themes, similar characters, some characters (the scifi writer) and places (Illium) just carry from book to book. Even phrases are being repeated by difference characters in different books (e.g. "I could carve a better man out of banana"). All in all addicitive fun reading in short pieces that you can read in a couple of train rides to work. When some time passes, I plan to top it off with Breakfast of the Champions.

Marcel Proust: Within a budding grove

This is the second installment in the Proust's massive "Remembrance of the things past". I read the first part years ago, in Slovene, and I loved it. I tried to get the remaining parts in Slovene, but it is impossible, I only managed to get the third one, in a used bookstore. So, I read the second part in an English translation and will carry on with the third one in Slovene - it should be fun to compare how do books read like when one switches the language half-way through.

The second book is composed of two parts: in the first part the subject is in Paris, still in love with Swan's daughter Gilberte and in the second one, he finds himself in Balbec on some sort of summer trip to the seaside to relieve his nervous issues and jumps from one flower to the other. The way Proust writes is still quite fascinating; there is no real storyline per se, all there is is continous reflections of the reality in the mind of the protagonist and how these reflections change as the time passes. These books really are about our rather fragmentary understanding of ourselves at any point in time, understanding which is made worse by the fact that we constantly change.

Ahmadou Kourouma: Sons of independence

This is just a short note to myself, for completeness, that I've read this book. Amazing book by an African author on the weirdness of post-colonial period as perceived by the newly liberated, but deeply transformed nations. A unique humour!

Nedeljka Pirjevec: Zaznamovana

Ta knjiga je bila najdena v enem izmed antikvariatov v Ljubljani in sicer pripada Dnevnikovi zbirki Slovenska Zgodba. Iz ovitka gleda gospa z Kim Jong Ilovimi sončnimi očali, zelo resnobna in izvemo, da je zadnja žena legende slovenske primerjalne književnosti Dušana Pirjevca. Knjiga je očitno precej avtobiografska, četudi so imena glavnih akterjev zamenjana. V osnovi gre za zgodbo, kako je Pirjevec umiral, ki se prepleta z avtoričino življenjsko zgodbo. Kakorkoli že, resnobna gospa gor ali dol, celo knjigo fukajo in pijančujejo. V resnici gre za zelo luciden vpogled v družbo 60ih let, brez interneta, v komunizmu, ko je bilo iti na Dunaj že svetovljansko potovanje. Ta čas so ljudje res drugače doživljali sebe in druge: profesorji so bili legende, intelektualci so preživeli večere ob kajenju, pitju in razglabljanju o svetu in filozofih, redke knjige so bile svetinja. Informacijskega onesnaženja in socialnih mrež še ni bilo in moško-ženski odnosi so bili kljub vsemu intelektualizmu še komično šovinistični. Skratka, 60 leta so bila resnično drugačen čas, veliko bolj tuj, kot si danes to mislimo. Svetujem.

Lars Gustafsson: Čebelarjeva smrt

Še ena kratka knjiga iz cikla 20. stoletje, ki sem jo prebral na brzino čez novo leto. Človek umira in potem umre. Pred smrtjo še naprej živi bogu za hrbtom nekje v ruralni švedski in se ukvarja s tem, kako misliti lastno smrt. Tip depresivne knjige, ki mene vedno znova nagovorijo, četudi knjiga ni kdove kako inovativna.