Seneca: On the Shortness of Life

Contains:

"On the Shortness of Life," "The Consolation of Helvetia," and "On Tranquility of Mind."

Don DeLillo: The Angel Esmeralda

Nine short stories from Don DeLillo.

Creation", Antaeus, Spring 1979

"Human Moments in World War III", Esquire, July 1983

"The Runner", Harper's, September 1988

"The Ivory Acrobat", Granta, Autumn 1988

"The Angel Esmeralda", Esquire, May 1994

"Baader-Meinhof", The New Yorker, April 1st 2002

"Midnight in Dostoevsky", The New Yorker, November 30th 2009

"Hammer and Sickle", Harper's, December 2010

"The Starveling", Granta, Autumn 2011

This was my first book by this guy. They were all quite good, short indeed. Fascinating to see transition from youthful playfullness to total gloom towards the end. The Angel Esmeralda and Hammer and Sickle were my favourites.

Marcel Proust: V svetu Guermantskih

Zmaga! Uspešno sem prebral še dve knjigi tretjtega dela Proustove epopeje, 650 strani majhnega tiska. S temi knjigami imamo nekakšen čuden odnošaj. Po eni strani sovražim glavni karakter, ki je v resnici razvajen bogatun, po drugi strani me pa knjige vseeno nekako privlečejo. Celo knjigo se v resnici zelo malo zgodi. Junakova babica umre, junak se zaljubi v gospo Guermantsko, junak nekako uspe priti v stik z gospo Guermatnsko, gospa Guermantska ni nič posebnega. Stotine strani gre v eno samo večerjo pri Guermantski. Povsem najeden sem tega špasa v tem trenutku, naprej čez nekaj let: Sodoma in Gomora! To bodo še porkarije...

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!