pick26 July-14 Aug 24 (audiobook)
Inspired to read by its position as No 6 on NYT best 100 of 21st century. It seemed to take much longer than 19 days!
Maybe because I re-listened to numerous sections when I realised I had drifted off and was confused as to how they fit. Sometimes the answer was they didn‘t really.
Many of the stories were fascinating but incomplete. Perhaps that was always Bolano‘s intention. A lot is left unanswered.
Weekly Report
I've finished 2666. What an experience.
I'm nearly done with Zama and waiting to see which books BookSpinBingo will tell me to prioritize.
The first time that Jean-Claude Pelletier read Benno von Archimboldi was Christmas 1980, in Paris, when he was nineteen years old and studying German literature.
#FirstLineFridays @ShyBookOwl
pickUnsettling book. And while I‘m not as sold on it as a lot of people are, I appreciate it for its imagery, imagination, and the payoffs he‘s able to give for most of the stories contained within (there are multitudes). He can start a new story, and in the last two sentences hammer it home so he makes it worth it. But I can‘t help but think of the now commonplace understanding/critique that dead women are used as plot devices in entertainment.
“This country,” he said to Reiter, “has tried to topple any number of countries into the abyss in the name of purity and will. As far as I‘m concerned, purity and will are utter tripe. Thanks to purity and will we‘ve all, every one of us, become cowards and thugs, which in the end are one and the same. Now we sob and moan and say we didn‘t know! we had no idea! it was the Nazis! we never would have done such a thing! We know how to whimper.”
*mutters to themselves while working their way through the Knausgaard series and “2666”*
Short books...I remember those...
pickI finished this beast on audio a couple of days ago. It‘s a lot!
This was my #Chile book for #ReadAroundTheWorld and another book completed for #1001Books. Oh, and my 8th finished book for #bookspinbonanza. 😃
Full review is on my blog: http://sprainedbrain.blog/2020/05/30/1001books-review-2666-by-roberto-bolano/
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Easing into this one. Still at the beginning, but really liking it so far. It‘s one of those books I‘ve kind of always wanted to read. Also, I read a whole bunch of Bolaño leading up to this, because I didn‘t want to jump right to his grand opus without knowing what he‘s about.
#BookHunt #Round 2
Multiple character POVs, multiple plots, multiple settings, multiple time periods, huge cast of characters, stories within stories...you name it, and I promise you, this book has it. ♥️
(I‘m always behind on everything. I don‘t want to tag anyone so late after this was posted—sorry!
#BiblioMAYnia Day 4: #SameBookDifferentColor although the hues and shades are purty similar. Still have not read this behemoth of a novel though, and I have two copies! 😭🤣😂
Hmm what to say about this? 🤷♀️ well we can see the extraordinary writing of the author. However, after a while, the kills (in my point of view) become boring. I notice that I was reading not for pleasure but just to end it. On the finals chapters the author regains our attention but never in the same way. Maybe Roberto was right and this should have been divide in 3 🤔🤔
pickExcellent, complex, not for the faint-hearted. A meditation on art, ethics, and femicide.
#day1 #7days7covers Post a cover you love each day for 7 days. No explanation needed. Thank you @IvoryLunatic
pickStunning. As other reviewers of this book have noted, 2666 tests readers‘ endurance to the outermost limits, both in terms of subject matter (part 4‘s relentless, harrowing violence in particular) and in length (900 pages of rich, complex prose). But I found the end result to be masterful, and well worth the effort.
Guys. What started as a hilarious commentary on academic culture has since spiraled into one of the bleakest books I have ever read. What this book is ABOUT is the unsolved mystery of a mass femicide happening in a region of Mexico. I'm a third of the way through the book, slogging through part 3 at the moment. And it's an important book, I won't deny it; but it is SO hard to read. I don't know how much more I can stomach.
pickI imagine it's hard to look back on the experience of reading any ~900 page book with real objectivity. I know there were times, certainly during my long breaks from it, that I'd have felt inclined to judge it merely okay. Now, at the end, I feel the weight of a full life behind my memories of it, an accomplishment that only great novels can claim.
2 volumes down, one to go.
This last one seems to be the shortest, and if I stick to ~50 pages a day, I should be able to complete it by year's end.
Book 1 of 3 is complete.
Given the font size, it feels like this book should easily be two times bigger. Will undoubtedly wind up being the longest thing I read in 2018.
pickThis book is an absolute masterwork in my opinion. Gritty, harrowing, oddly dreamlike and building suspense and foreboding brick by menacing brick until the whole wall comes crashing down on you like a midnight storm.
#augustisatrip #day10 - #mexico
Feels like I trot this title out a lot for these theme challenges, and I regret doing so in light of my continued failure to actually read it. Still one of my favorite editions of any book I own.
#ReadingResolutions Day 28: The #ThursdayThriller I hope to read for our upcoming July-September reading theme on crime, murder, mystery at GatheringBooks. Good intentions count for something, right? Right? #MockFaint.
so-soThis was a long, very tough read, centered around the disappearances and deaths of several hundred women in St. Teresa, a fictional town in Mexico near the U.S. border in the 90s. It was incredibly gruesome, particularly part 4, and I didn‘t think the gore added to the story. I found part 5 to be the most interesting in the way it tied all the previous parts together.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/04/26/theater/bolano-2666-stage-version-free-str...
“This five and a half hour stage adaptation . . .”
I think this legitimately deserves an “OMFG!”
Any Roberto Bolano fans out there? The stage adaptation of “2666” is now streaming for free! https://nyti.ms/2KcAELz
This adaptation sounds as ambitious as the book, and I suppose it would have to be. The foundation that funded the production and the streaming was started with lottery winnings. They produced it knowing it would never be profitable, just for the sake of art.
so-soWhat on earth was this? I can‘t say I‘m as blown away by this as everyone else seems to be. The writing was deadly monotonous at times and the ridiculous amount of detail was just... ridiculous! And what was the point of it all? For once I am going to complain about the ending not being, well, an ending. This book should come with a disclaimer for that.
Finally taken off the shelf to read.
My weekend plans changed allowing me to read more than I expected. The best part was my timer. This was the first time my clumsy self did not accidentally reset the clock. #24in48 @24in48
pickGreat book - Great cover! I love his storytelling and will for sure reread these in the future.
#Septembowie Day 23: I anticipate that #TimeWillCrawl as I read this tome of a novel - not sure exactly when I will start reading this one. Hopefully in this lifetime. But what can I say? I love big books and I can not lie.
Adrian: "This is the most complex novel by Bolaño. The story is about a man looking for a writer who has disappeared. He travels through Mexico and arrives in a fictional city named Santa Teresa. That city is based on Juarez where women did disappear. The terror in Bolaño's work is the kind you can't see but it exists all over the world. In the news, they show you all the horrible things. Bolaño scares you without ever showing you the monster."
pick2666 exists of 5 novels that are hardly connected. The central part is about the ongoing murdering of women in a Mexican bordertown where many come looking for work in the 'cheap labour' American manufacturing factories. This story is based on the true situation in Ciudad Juarez. The impunity is shocking, as is the halfhearted way the police investigates the murders, which Bolano describes in every gruesome detail. #1001books Picture: Austria
I felt relief after the end of part four, creating distance between myself and all of these dead women. Then I met the 500 Jews and the Germans tasked with "disposing" of them.
So these have been sitting on my shelf forever (Roberto bolano) anyone want to do a #buddyread with me? I've read the skating rink and the Third Reich..
Sad to say, I don't have any #mexicanormexicanamericanauthors on my shelves, but I am enjoying building my TBR from everyone else's posts!
The closest I've got is Bolano, who was Chilean but spent much of his youth in Mexico, which was the setting for most of 2666. A challenging, at times compelling (slow at others), but ultimately satisfying read.
#maybookflowers
@RealLifeReading
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