I am behind again

Yikes, I have read two very long, very different, and very interesting books since my last post. Lots of dithering around before I settled down to read these. I was having trouble focusing because there is so much I want to read. So, the first book I read was The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. This is a perfect Fall read. It is long, it is booky, it is kind of creepy but not really. It is about a daughter who is snooping through her father's papers one night and finds a letter addressed to "My dear and unfortunate successor...". When she asks her father about it she is begun on a quest that is her family's seeming birthright as she pieces together the stories her dad tells her with her own need to find the truth. About... Vlad the Impaler!!! Yes, the characters in the book trace the bones and lore and actual vampire himself throughout history to present day. But this was written several years ago by a skilled and smart writer, not anything like any of the crap written today about vampires. I highly recommend it. Highly.

The second book was one I read for book club: The Hakawati by Rabih Alameddine. I kinda underestimated how long it would take me to read it and in fact did not finish in time. I still went and talked and listened and such. But I did finish it after, the only time I ever finished a book club book after the club took place. Usually I realize that I never wanted to read it anyway so why bother. But this I wanted to finish. This book was really different from other things I've read. As background, a Hakawati is a storyteller in Arabic language; a professional storytellerp who weaves stories that mesmerize and can take from six months to a year to tell. In the book and in present day, the main character Osama is returning to Beirut to sit at his father's deathbed. His family all gathers in the hospital. Within this setting stories begin - of grandfathers and relatives and hakawatis and Fatima, who appears to be a goddess, Baybar, the slave king, imps, djinns, witches and horses with magical powers. And these characters, these stories become the atmosphere of the book. The real people in the book become more like mere mortals walking around in the fairytale. They stand out as the different, as opposed to all of the mythical creatures and people. It really brings you into what used to be a society of storytelling passed down through generations and it made me want to find that - in my family - in our society. Without stories, there can be no magic. And stories told out loud carry a different resonance and involve a different type of relationship to the story. I loved this book (even if it did take me forever to finish).